


Hear No Evil

by wvenivies



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, Slow Burn, Teen Angst, sidejeonghyo, some sexuality crisis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-08-26 09:59:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16679455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wvenivies/pseuds/wvenivies
Summary: Sana's got a four-year-old secret she's finally letting go of and a two-week-old attachment to Momo, the only Japanese-speaking LGBTQ helpline volunteer in Seoul, who gets increasingly entangled in her already-messy life.orSana and Momo try to find freedom and happiness in life.





	1. prologue; sunlight

You'd see Sana sitting atop one of the school's many picnic tables, eyes slightly hooded, lips slightly pulled up, gazing into the eyes of her boyfriend. He's the class comedian - the one who'd break out the slapstick humour when situations would get a little too serious, but who was now strumming a guitar, looking up into the eyes of the most perfect girl he'd ever had the privilege of meeting. 

 

Sana's friends would gather around with arms folded, heads tilted to the side, with confusion, disbelief, amusement and a plethora of other mixed emotions running through their minds. Being quite the softie herself,  Sana would try to shoo her friends away from the scene, her boy's fingers now stumbling on chords and messing up tabs like the first time he'd tried to serenade her.

 

Other guys in the schoolyard would take note of how the sunlight would illuminate the pale smoothness of Sana's skin, how the uniform was fit to her every curve, or how they'd die for a chance to be at the receiving end of that look she gives him. The girls in Sana's squad groans at how much of a dork the guy is, what perverts the other guys in their year were, but concludes that maybe Sana's picked the right one, considering that he's, realistically speaking, the closest thing their school has to a charming romantic. 

 

You'd see the light pinkish hues of the sky darken to a deep shade of crimson, a visual representation of how far the boy's falling for the Japanese girl before him. His fingers barely strike the steel strings of the acoustic guitar, his chords which he'd forced himself to memorise over the course of three months fade into one thought and one thought only: Sana. Sana looks beautiful. Sana looks gorgeous against a warm backdrop and boy does he want to catch her bubblegum-tinted lips in a kiss. 

 

Sana's never kissed him though.

 

Then, you'd see Sana hop off the top of the picnic table as soon as she sees the analog clock near the cafeteria hit 16:00:25, slinging a strap of her bag (which was in the shape of Hello Kitty, mind you) over her shoulder in the process. She rewards her boyfriend, now showing the least subtle signs of disappointment in his boyish features, with a quick pat on the head and gives a long, torso-crushing hug to each of her six incredulous friends. A too-eager "Bye!" later and Sana's sliding her phone out of her skirt's sole pocket, a pep in her step as she's exiting the school compound. 

 

She finds herself, alone, standing by a manmade pond in the corner of the park at the edge of her neighbourhood. With fingertips which were just a while ago unwavering and steady, the girl who now feels suffocated by the collars of both her blouse and blazer hesitantly taps a specific set of numbers and hits the " _Call_ " button two silent beats later.

 

Sana's breath hitches and she feels her knees buckle a bit at the familiar, pseudo-calming standby tune to a line she'd found on a particular website just two weeks ago. The website was baby pink, she noticed (it's her favourite colour after all), and while it looked a tad outdated, the charm of pastel rainbow flags and fuschia inverted triangles and the number to a helpline in sparkly purple lettering gave her enough hope. 

 

That hope carried her through her first shaky conversation in shaky Korean, littered with bad grammar and vocabulary she'd translated the night before. That hope carries her now as she first anticipates the soothing words of the volunteer she half-comprehends, then rushes through, in her native Kansai dialect, something along the lines of: "…I'd like to speak to M-momo."

 

She's unsure if the woman on the other side of the phone call understands the rest of her sentence, but she's grateful for her catching the name she admittedly stumbled over because the line is now being transferred over to another volunteer with a long " _beep_ ". 

 

Sana doesn't have to squint while painstakingly translating this one's words; the Japanese volunteer at the flip side of the helpline breathes a " _Hello_ ,  _S_ - _chan_ ,  _Momo's_   _here_   _for_   _you_ ," into the phone and the schoolgirl senses her heartbeat slow to a much more normal pace.

 

Resting the entirety of her body on a park bench, the girl presses the phone against her cheek with both of her freezing hands and wonders if Momo can tell how utterly safe Sana feels when she listens to her.

 

" _Are_   _you_   _ready_   _to_   _tell_   _me?_   _You_   _can_ _just_   _let_   _it_   _all_   _out_   _if you'd_   _rather_   _have_   _a_   _quiet_   _companion_.  _I'll_   _stay_ _with_   _you_   _for_   _however_   _long_   _they'll_   _let_   _me_." 

 

You'd see the guilt quickly appear on Sana's face as she plays flashbacks of the 20, 30, 40-minute long sessions where she'd just clutch onto the hard exterior of the same bench, crying, sobbing, heaving, wordlessly, into her phone's microphone. Relives, at least for a moment, how her heart had felt especially heavy with a burden she's held locked for, what,  _four_   _years_?

 

Still, she currently has memories of Momo's gentle " _it's_ _alright_ "s,  " _it_   _will_   _get_   _better_ "s and " _there's_   _nothing_   _wrong_   _with_ _you_ "s kept, stored carefully in a separate box within the confines of her otherwise messy head. Sana may have barely heard the cheerful helpline volunteer speak much over the past four phonecalls, but it's the security in her voice, the sense of familiarity in her intonation, the sparse but much needed sentiments in between Sana's own gasps for air, that urges Sana to trust whoever " _Momo_ " is. 

 

"I'm ready, Momo. I think I'm finally ready to talk about this."


	2. One; Three plus ten plus one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Never say that."
> 
> "Your sexuality is never the sole cause for your sadness."
> 
> "Breathe."

Loafers dragging lazily against the pavement, Sana hopes that the people passing by don't notice her stinging puffy eyes or the way she's gripping onto her phone a tad too tight. Forget the fact that she'd gotten a manicure done two days ago - if it means she gets something to hold on to, she can deal with a chipped nail. 

 

Before the helpline calls, Sana would, without fail, embark on the two-mile-long journey home with her headphones on and allow her mind to wander. Since her conversations (more like  _sob sessions_ ) with Momo, the girl couldn't seem to stand the same tired playlist of love ballads, nor the Pompompurin headphones she'd received as a Secret Valentine's gift from her now-boyfriend. Her brows furrow for an instant at the thought of her boyfriend. 

 

A loafer scrapes against the concrete particularly loudly and Sana reminds herself why she bothers to walk home. There may be a bus that stops at her school, the park entrance and a little ways away from her house, but with the promise of quick transport comes unwanted add-ons like noise and stinky boys. Sana's concluded that thirty minutes of undisturbed contemplation is probably best for her. 

 

Yet today? Today, the two-mile long stretch was twenty-five percent complete and she'd barely given herself the opportunity to be introspective about more pressing issues. She shouldn't be worrying about non-existant relationship problems with Minho. 

 

So she lets herself drift into the memory of the, more one-sided than not, conversation she had with Momo ten minutes ago. Sana remembers hearing Momo's innocent little " _okay_ ", and couldn't tell if it was meant to reassure her or to soothe her. Because the next thing she clearly recalls is that indescribable sensation which creeped into her nose and that nauseating lump which grew at the back of her throat that, together, screamed:  _Sana you're going to ugly cry._

 

In actuality, she could only sense thin streams dampening locks of her hair right as she chokes out a: "Four years ago, I hurt my best friend." Then, anticipating confusion about why she'd even mention friendship disputes to an LGBTQ helpline volunteer, she explains herself. Something along the lines of "My sexuality made me do it" or "…Yes, it's linked to my sexuality."

 

The Japanese girl, now halfway through her route though, winces at the lingering aftertaste of the guilt that wrecked her senses. It's the reason why she grabbed the plush face of her Hello Kitty backpack and slammed it against her forehead endlessly as Momo's words fell in one ear and out the other. It's the reason why Sana can't pin down exactly what Momo told her after she'd confessed that. 

 

No, wait.

 

Stopping in her tracks and letting the gradated expanse of sky, sun and clouds interrupt her spiralling mind, she gets out that tiny imaginary safe labelled "Momo" and finds this: " _Shh…I'm all ears, I'm here. If you're comfortable, you can speak your mind. I won't judge you for the things you've done in the past."_

 

Sana gazes at the insignificant details of her surroundings - the aging street signs, cracks in the asphalt, pairs of pigeons pecking at nothing. Doesn't spare too much mental energy to actually think about them; hundreds of Momo-related questions take turns to pop in and just as quickly fade into the back of her mind. Among them: 

 

"How does she always sound so genuinely sweet?"

 

"Why does she keep saying that " _she's here_ " and why do I like it even if I know she's physically not there?"

 

"Did she really not judge me even after I told her about all  _that_?" 

 

"How can a stranger make me feel so cared for?" 

 

She'd want to remain there, pausing and thinking about Momo. She'd want to remain there with heels planted solid into the ground, but the pigeons are squawking and drops of rain are increasingly striking against her skin. Nothing…then, audibly swift and steady steps sound out adjacent to the pitter patter of the drizzle. 

 

Sana's now neutral toward the fact that she skipped the distraction of music this journey back home. On one hand, the lull of her idols' voices would ( _might_ ) drown out the mellow timbre of Momo's voice. She doesn't want that; she only gets two opportunities every week to speak to the volunteer and she wants to remember it as clear as can be. 

 

On the other hand, a wave of embarassment inches closer with each step she takes. Sana recalls the warmth of the late afternoon sky and pouts at how mercurial the weather's been - it's dark and pouring now. Lifting the semi-waterproof blazer over her head, she quickens her footsteps into a near-sprint. With the embarassment-guilt combination comes a dialogue spliced haphazardly:

 

"Of course I liked her, doesn't every gay girl get a crush on their best friend-" 

 

The small puddles leave splashes of water stained on the faux-leather of her shoes. Sana winces for another reason. 

 

Momo's silence pressed her to carry on. 

 

"I thought she looked at me differently. She hugged me longer than she did the others, I-"

 

Her street's name around the bend, Sana recognises that her journey is nearly eighty-percent complete and she turns the sprint into a light jog. In spite of the slowing of her pace, the conversation speeds along. 

 

"I fell, Momo, I was obsessed, I was addicted to someone who wasn't even mine, I-"

 

Sana bunches and holds the sleeves of her blazer to her ears in a vain attempt to ignore her thoughts. 

 

" _S-chan_ ," Momo whispered into the microphone, a shaky breath escaping along with it. " _You were young and still trying to figure out who you were. That's not your fault. Your heart-"_

 

"I betrayed her! I hurt her! So bad! If I didn't fuck it up, she wouldn't have fallen into that depressed-ass state she was in for like months! If I didn't do it, I-" 

 

Echoes of it all hit her harder and harder and she remembers screaming it all out louder and louder. In her head, amplified: 

 

"If I hadn't gotten so jealous, she would've never given me that look the next day, and the day after that, I-"

 

"I was too clingy, maybe that's why I started to like her, but I'm super clingy with like everyone so I-"

 

"I deserve it - her not talking to me I mean. I deserve that for the shit I put her through-"

 

And then, that deafeningly full-throated statement:

 

"Why was I born like this? I wish I wasn't born like this. If I weren't bi, this-"

 

And then, a deafeningly hushed statement: 

 

" _Never say that._

 

_Never. Say. That."_

 

Momo suspended her self-deprecating introspection with those three simple words.

 

It wasn't the stark contrast between Sana's booming whines and Momo's tender voice that set her straight. It's the finality of those three words plus the ten from " _your sexuality is never the sole cause for your sadness,"_  that followed.

 

Sheer finality. 

 

A reality that Sana knows is true, though whether she believes it is another thing. 

 

" _So_ ," the volunteer digresses, a resigned sigh as she continued, " _What do you think is the best way to go about this?"_

 

The darkest shade of navy blue illuminated slightly by the street lamps which had just flickered on. Sana hears the infrequent honks of cars as they drive by, the buzzing of nightflies, the jingle of her keys muted on impact with her fluffy pink fuzzball of a keycharm. She leans against the gate and looks back - two miles back - into the blurred outline of the park. 

 

Remembers how she blanked out at that question, roled over, stomach-down, and began to twist the fragile stems of wildflowers around her fingers. She remembers the light sound of Momo's breathing and how it made the pleasant chirps of bluejays and rustling of leaves sound that much more peaceful. It's had even sent tickles down her spine.

 

She remembers letting her eyelids fall.

 

" _S-chan_?" 

 

Sana grazes her thumb over the pastel keycharm and swoons at the way she sounded. Cherishes it, places an imaginary signpost over the memory, still packaged in the now bigger "Momo" box, with "Important!" painted in a large red font. Remembering her call her by that name, with that honorific, she recollects the first time Momo's called her that. 

 

_Their first conversation._

 

 _"You can call me Momo-_ " 

 

" _S"_

 

_"Huh?"_

 

_"Call me S."_

 

_It was for anonymity._

 

_"Okay, S-chan, I'll call you S."_

 

Momo just had to individualize it. 

 

What with the way Momo speaks with her, it's almost as if every line, every counter is personalized and not something helpline employees are forced to regurgitate from a tired guide. 

 

The schoolgirl remembers how she'd finally replied,  kind of in a joke-like tone, how a professional therapist would advise her to "apologize", but that she herself would be "too much of a fucking chicken to do it".

 

She remembers how Momo chuckled, a hint of something off in the way she did so, but still cute nonetheless, and admitted shyly that she " _can relate, but without the curse word_ ".

 

Then, a pregnant pause. 

 

Sana wonders about Momo, now, stood in the middle of her backyard garden right beside the towering camphor tree. 

 

She wraps her arms around the trunk of it, lets her cheek rest against its rough bark and just wonders about her. Because she doesn't know a damn thing about Momo. 

 

She wonders if Momo's out to her friends, out to her family, if she's out to everyone she's ever met. She wonders what area of Kansai Momo's from, her reason for coming to Korea, how she's coping with it. 

 

She wonders how old she is, whether she's working, whether she's still in school, how long she's been volunteering. She wonders why Momo'd even volunteered in the first place, what her sexuality is, whether she's taken… 

 

Wonders if Momo thinks about her as much as she thinks about Momo. 

 

Five conversations. 

 

Five conversations and Sana's kind of flabbergasted at how she's developed such a deep connection to someone she knows close to nothing about. Those were the exact types of conversations she'd ordinarily have as internal monologues into the wee hours of the night.

 

Those nights scared her. Alone in her bed, she used to frighten herself with ideas of abandonment should any of her friends find out. 

 

But, at the park, nearly an hour ago, dusk chasing the remainder of the sunlight out of the atmosphere, she was calming herself with the companionship of a stranger with whom she'd had just four previous conversations with. 

 

" _Breathe_ ," Momo cooed, although it almost sounded like a plea. " _Breathe, when you're feeling a lot of things. Join in with me, okay?"_  Sana thought she didn't need it, but she did it anyway just to go along with Momo. They inhaled in unison, exhaled in unison, then did it over and over again until Sana felt the wildflower unwind from her pinky. 

 

" _I learnt that from my dance teacher,"_  Momo answered, as if she could tell that the girl on the other end of the line was wondering, yet again,  _why_. 

 

"Minatozaki Sana! What are you doing outside hugging that old tree?! Come in, dinner's ready!" Another familiar voice, one she finds a bit (really, quite  _a_   _bit_ ) more naggy than Momo's, jolts her out of her daze. Without the sturdiness of the tree's trunk against her chest, Sana feels a little emptier while she trudges her way into house. 

 

She kicks her disgustingly wet loafers off her feet at the door and rests her backpack gently on the sofa, careful not to make a sound (for some reason). The rest of the ground floor is pitch black, save for the warm glow and sparkle of the chandelier in the dining room. Her arms hang awkwardly with nothing in her grip as she walks forward. 

 

Chewing, slurping and swallowing sounds blended with the inviting smell of fresh fried omurice forces her lips right back into a smile. She pulls a chair, takes a seat and thanks her mother again for preparing her favourite dish. Sana tilts her head to the side and brings a champagne flute (her mother'd always stressed on appearances) filled with a mysterious sparkling drink, to her nose. 

 

"Momo." That's the first time she's ever said the dancer's name out loud and she tucks her head in, thinking about how  _nicely_  it rolls off of her tongue. 

 

'Thank god, our daughter can still speak in basic Japanese even after living here for six years! It's a miracl-ah!" Sana's father gets elbowed in the ribs by his wife, who stares at Sana with an unreadable expression. She mouthes something to her husband, picks up her chopsticks and resumes digging into her meal without saying another word. 

 

Meanwhile, Sana's still daydreaming about Momo, chopsticks fiddling with the cherry tomatoes and parsley that sat atop the omelette. The dancer. Momo dances, and it's one of the few things the oddly quiet princess of the household can think about throughout dinnertime. 

 

Momo dances, and if the girl's, say, younger than twenty, no twenty-five-years-old (hell, she may even take  _thirty_ ), that's a real guarantee that the volunteer is attractive. Sana thinks back to her friends in their school's hip hop dance club and gives herself an optimistic nod.  _Yeah, must be hella hot_. She entertains the thought of the girl having abs, but chooses to shake any further images out of her head. 

 

"Sana…stop playing with your food. You need to eat, you're a growing girl, you need to-"

 

Sana gives her mother an emotionless nod, reaches over and presses her lips to the rim of the champagne flute, letting the peachy, sugary carbonation of the soda fizz on her tongue. It's so saccharine, so Momo. 

 

The only child of the Minatozaki family bites at the corner of her bottom lip.  _It's so unlike her_. She should've stopped when the walk ended. She's wondering again, wandering. This time with less than hopeful sentiments, the flood of negativity upsetting her still confused, still too immature teenage brain. 

 

Sana remembers how Momo had to cut off the line too soon for her liking, the two having talked past thirty-minute mark ages ago. In this reality, her companion, her stranger of a companion, is bound under rules set by the LGBTQ centre's policy, is bound by the disconnect of an anonymous helpline.

 

A pair of chopsticks falls from a limp hand, rolls across the table before hitting the side of a coffee mug with a soft "clink". She wonders if she'll ever get to meet Momo. She thinks she knows the answer, visibly frowns at the answer.

 

Whether she truly believes it is another thing. 

 

 _"Breathe_."

 

 

♡

 

 

"Have you guys fucked though?" 

  
"Oh my god, Jeongyeon. No, we haven't," Sana refutes, slightly too aggressively, slightly incongruent with how you'd expect her to react. Sana's short-haired classmate cocks an eyebrow at her before choosing to let out a hearty chuckle to lighten the mood.

 

Sana's usually the one to brighten everyone's spirits but today she rests her chin on her arm, pressing it softly against the wooden desk. 

  
Any of the hundreds of students in their year would notice that the whole "senior snake squad" (though the majority of the five would beg to differ) is gathered at the back of their Literature class. The seven boys huddled along the front rows certainly did, cheeky snorts, roaming eyes, and all. 

  
You'd then see Yoo Jeongyeon, the junior girls' favourite athletic captain, crossing her arms. See the most demure-looking of the three "non-snakes", Myoui Mina, adjusting her skirt whilst sat beside Sana. Rumours were spread about the not-so-coincidental seating arrangement (what with Mina and Sana both being, really, the only Japanese students in the school). But Mina, ever the diplomat, hushed them with a " _Myoui... Minatozaki... I wonder why they sat us together.."._

  
You'd see the prime snake, Im Nayeon, with that characteristic pair of bunny front-teeth linking arms with a girl known to bear the school's most heart-stopping smile, Kim Jennie, both resting cross legged on their classmates' tables. 

  
If any of the boys were keeping track of the time that's passed since their stereotypical soccer-mom of a teacher stepped out of the turquoise doors, they would have questioned why the girls hadn't left for break. But the sun was just in the right spot for lemon yellow rays to refract at a certain angle upon the condensation on the windows, showering Sana's auburn locks in its radiance and embellishing the moistness of her lips with a sparkle. 

  
Despite the lethargy apparent in the way she fought against her hooded eyes, the flickering of her eyelids only served to highlight glimmering eyelashes and teasingly golden irises. The boys fortunate enough to see her like this everyday would swear, in boisterous "discussions" with their "bros", that the sunlight's sole purpose was to dance on them. 

  
It didn't help that Sana at 11:27 a.m., after what she'd purportedly considered "Literary Hell", looks straight out of bed - stray strands of hair strewn over her face, mouth slightly parted. Those desperate enough to creep another glance at Sana would soon turn back at their friends and rave about her "bed hair". 

  
You'd see Nayeon lean back a bit to catch some of the boys' conversation (like the school gossip she is), but she grimaces and notably shifts on the desk. After motioning for Jennie to look behind them, she scoots closer to Sana. "He…looks sweet but you should really not rush it. And I mean, like, really," Nayeon insists, emphasis placed on the "really". 

  
Sana's tired, for a lot of reasons, then for one, then more. So worn out that she doesn't spare Nayeon a reply, merely nodding and looking to Jennie pleadingly. A boy in the front lets out a strangled yelp and strikes his friend's arm with a rolled up worksheet, all for Jennie to observe with repugnance. The latter scoffs, tightens her grip on Nayeon, hissing: "Minho may be Minho, but Minho's still a guy and 90% of guys just want their dick wet." 

 

"Sana, I get it. Funny dudes with guitars are hot," Jeongyeon reasons, and, even though there's only a couple of inches of space unoccupied, gets on the table, a leg left dangling. "But yesterday, in Math, I heard him whine about not getting intimate or whatever with you," she continues, then scans the class and rolls her eyes as she leans closer to Sana. "His friends called him a fag and called you a slu-"

 

"Actually, I think Minho really likes you as a person, Sana!" Mina interrupts, small, encouraging smile despite the mocking snickers from the front. 

 

"Yeah, I hope so," Sana mumbles into the fabric of her blazer. Her remaining energy is spent on a flick of her finger to swipe away a stuffed Pusheen charm off the screen of her phone. Her eyes travel along the length of the classroom, almost as if she's avoiding the concern in three of her friends' eyes, and they land on the seven boys. 

 

You'd see Sana indiscriminately wave at every boy that not-so-secretly had a crush on her when walking through the corridors. She's since toned down on any form of interactions with the opposite sex since Minho'd confessed to her, dozen red roses in trembling hands, though it's become second nature to her. Accordingly, she briefly forgets about the way he'd look at her when jealous, even the sour feeling in her gut, and sends one of them - the tubbiest one - a hand heart. 

 

Then, Sana hears it. That - the dreaded question - the, "So do you actually like him?" question she's heard come from Jeongyeon's lips... how many times before?

 

If you'd ask the softball players, they'd say three or four, if you asked Nayeon's theatre pals they'd strongly confirm that it's two, ask any of her known exes friends' and they'd say something about "not knowing about hookups" but being solidly sure that it's "somewhere between seven and fifteen" not counting any "teachers she'd seduced for those great grades". Other boys, particularly those who leave heart-shaped cards and pink letters on her first-period desk, would nervously stand on the theatre kids' side. 

 

"I think he's funny," Sana starts with a newfound urge to placate her friends. "I think... he's really cute, really funny. Really funny; I always laugh when I'm with him. Buys me cute things, treats me like a princess..." 

 

Mina shrieks, resting a hand over her heart and pats Sana's head when the latter finally shifts and lays her head on the other Japanese girl's shoulder. She's staring off into the distance again, lips parted again, white teeth peeking out and gleaming under the intensifying sunshine. It's bright enough and her eyelids are low enough for her to spot the light incident on her lashes. 

 

She'd spark another conversation about how pretty the effect was if this was any other day, but just like yesterday, this was not any other day and just like yesterday, her clouded gaze fixates on her phone. Her friends talk among themselves and if today was last week, she'd butt in on the ongoing argument on whether Sana and Minho were a good match based on current evidence, but her stray fingers scoop up her phone. 

 

With a practised efficiency, she switches it on, types in her password, lowers the brightness on her screen and checks through her chat groups. Pauses as she peruses a recent string of messages shared between Chaeyoung and Tzuyu on "Hip&HopinGang". You'd see the schoolgirl leave them on read and instead swipe into her "Phone" app.

 

Dim white rectangles replacing the dull yellowish glint in her eyes, her thumb lingers over a history of phonecalls made to the same number. She wonders how, in the span of less than a month, a non-personal landline number has made it into her most freqeuntly called list when the girl hates, no,  _stronger,_ abhors speaking over the phone.

 

Sana clumsily lets her phone fall, screen to the table, and looks out the window. It's not too grey, not too blue, a cloudy day without the terrors of cumulonimbus nor the benefit of cirrus clouds to make the sky any more interesting. She grabs the phone again.

 

Expecting a quick answer to her internal uncertainty, she lets out a sigh and, lips twitching, nearly puts her inward incantations of " _23_ ,  _23_ ,  _23_ _more_   _hours_ " at risk of being read by the observant pupils of either her still-bickering friends or still-gushing nerds in class. 

 

If they'd caught her in the act, they'd see the twitching halt, then notice how her lips would conform to the shape of either "P", "B" or "M" twice, before resuming with the endless twitching. If they could recite the paragraphs lined in her head, they'd consider the text came from a John Green book. Typical clichéd Y.A. nonsense from a lovestruck teenager's tortured mind, a soft " _okay_ " from someone else, floating between sentences. 

 

With the phone still within her grip, it vibrates and she pulls up her messages with a groan, abruptly recollecting pieces of what she pondered about two nights ago. She's contemplating setting her school dance team's group chat to "Mute Indefinitely" when those ugly thoughts get dragged into the garbage bin of her mind.

 

Sana wonders something between " _that number, they could text?"_ and _"it's her, it's her, it's her, it's-",_  phone pressed to her chest. The boys wished they could be the phone in that moment whilst Sana hoped - stomach clenched, fist clenched, heart... doing its thing - that it was Momo. Momo who typed it, Momo who translated her consideration, her care, her sweet, sweet, saccharine voice into written words for the first time. 

 

That hope carries through, somewhat. 

 

"Dear || S-ちゃん (｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡ ||, hope you are doing well. Do contact || もも\\(^•^)/ || if you need further emotional support for any LGBTQ+ related issues."


	3. Two; Seven plus five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Momo's a girl, and she's a girl.
> 
> And, oh god it's Momo.

 Sana excuses herself from her home with a gentle tap on her mother's shoulder, an elaborate getup of running shoes, tracksuit and even sport headphones as well as a lie. With a final reminder to "put enough sunscreen on" or "bring a hat", she ignores her mother and begins to jog out of the gate.

 

  
As soon as she thinks she's far enough from her mom's prying eyes, she slows down exponentially, dragging running shoes against the pavement. As per, except this time, she's actually tired and  _oh god is she not prepared for the seniors' physical examination in less than a month’s time._  
 

  
She pulls out her phone, eyes instantly glued to the screen, bumping against elderly strangers as she ambles her way over to her favourite park. As she stumbles out hushed apologies to the grandmothers and grandfathers going about their day, she runs her thumb across that one chat she’s kept in her tabs the entire night.

  
 

Recalling the strain of her eyes as she occasionally unlocked and locked her phone in the pitch black of the underside of her blanket, just to have another glance at a chat that would not and could not continue, she winces, stopping just outside the secondary entrance of the park. Tears her sight away from the screen.

  
 

Sana runs her hand along the soft, eroded stone of one of the entrance’s columns, feeling the concavities of where curious children and torrential rain have made their mark. She wonders silly thoughts, thoughts about the inherent rightness or wrongness of sacrificing sleep (and her already poor eyesight) to endlessly stare at a singular message from a singular stranger. Deliberates about it, ponders on it, as her fingertips kiss the cold of the granite goodbye.

  
  
Yanking out her earphones, she chooses to take a seat on the nearest bench to the entrance, in fear of her anemia making her more fatigued than she already is. Despite the proximity to the rest of the neighbourhood, it’s quiet - the area around the secondary entrance has always been relatively quiet.

  
 

If a small girl, around two, held steady on her little wellie-clad feet by a large-bellied man had not caught her eye, Sana knows that she instead would have more silly thoughts floating about. Like, is it bad for you to pretend to stumble, or at least psych yourself into stumbling, on every other word when speaking in Korean, despite having said the exact same phrase six times?

  
  
She lets her phone rest on her lap, appreciating the far-away singing of cicadas, nearby cooing of tree sparrows, and somewhere in between, the pure laughter of father and daughter. She picks it up only when the music she’d rather not hear at the moment switches to the deep voice of someone new. So she stumbles: "H-hi...Could I uh…c-uh-talk to Momo?"

  
  
"Oh! Well, Momo-ssi had to reschedule her time with us, but she'll be back and listenin' by, say, 3?" With the unfamiliar boom of the male volunteer’s voice, Sana lets two discomforting things settle within her. The first, the less disconcerting of the two, is of the delay. Sana’s fine with this; she goes with the flow. The second, the one that irks her more (though she doesn’t admittedly know why) is the way he says  _her_ name. Or rather, the act of someone else saying her name.

  
 

Sana’s less fine with this.

 

  
"A-Oh…Okay then, uh, thank you,” she utters, this time with a less controlled stutter.

  
  
"-Wait! Before you hang up, why, name's Taejoon by the way, and if you're comfortable with talking to me, we'd appreciate some feedback on Momo's interactions with you thus far."

  
 

Again, her name. You’d see perturbation plastered on the face of a girl looking to the iridescence of smooth, water-moistened pebbles at the edge of a pond. As if, in their shimmer, they can explain why a man she doesn’t know, saying the name of a fellow volunteer she doesn’t know, irks her. Why she feels the way she does now. Why she places that much importance in the sound of the voicing of a name.

  
  
"U-Yeah, sure?" S-chan stammers out.

  
  
She can almost hear the satisfaction in the male volunteers voice as she finally replies. Caught in a sense of relief, Taejoon raises his voice in excitement (enough to warrant a notable distance between Sana’s ear and the phone), asking: "Thank you, so how many conversations have you had with her?"

  
  
They go through a typical survey. Around as typical as if she’d seen them printed on a survey sheet she’d done in school (minus the sexuality bit). He asks if talking to Momo has provided her with assurance about her sexuality or gender. He asks if Momo made attempts at helping her through her personal issues. He asks if she would recommend Momo to any of her friends if they needed guidance.

  
 

In all questions but the last, she breezes through with only a lapse in speech every now and again. In all questions but this, she doesn’t hesitate. In all questions but this, she can keep within the confines of her little box of her and Momo.

  
 

In this, the first person she thinks of is Mina, then, images of the rest of her friends follow. Because she knows Mina feels best when speaking in Japanese. And she also knows she wouldn’t exactly tell (painfully straight) Mina about Momo even if her (exceptionally straight) friend did come out to her. She knows she won’t tell any of her (remarkably straight) friends about Momo either.

  
 

She doesn’t particularly like this question, definitely doesn’t particularly like her internalised response to it, but she gives Taejoon an answer he, Momo, and all rational people would prefer to hear. In return, the man gives Sana a contented sigh she would rather not hear, his inferred satisfaction only serving to amplify her guilt.

  
  
"Momo-ssi is busy these days; many Japanese callers nowadays, but she always puts in so much care and attention for everyone she speaks to.” With only the tone of pride ingrained in each word of his praise, Sana knows that the volunteer’s bearing a wide grin.

 

  
The thought’s nearly,  _nearly_  enough to take her off the delayed realisation that Momo speaks to other people. Everyone she speaks to?

  
 

You’d see Sana, one hand buried deep into the front pocket of her tracksuit, distracting herself with the commotion of the father-daughter duo, now stood by the pond, by one retreating swan. Its pained honk, her careless giggles, his stern bellow as he reaches for the stick clasped between her hands.  
  
  
"The girl's got two part-time jobs, spends eight hours a week volunteering for calls and even helps out at the centre every other weekend. Amazing, right?" Taejoon continues, as if trying to revive a conversation that’s been dead on one end for far too long.

  
  
"Oh-woah..." she manages to force herself to say. It’s  _weak_. Sana knows it’s  _weak_. It’s weak because Momo doesn’t just offer simple care and attention when she speaks. She offers more. It’s weak because Momo isn’t simply amazing for being such a charitable, hardworking person. She’s more.

  
  
"Yep, that's our Momo-ssi."

  
 

_Our_. Sana doesn’t think about this. She can’t.

  
  
So Sana's thinking about Momo again, thinking about how wonderful a person Momo is. Thinks about how this is exactly the kind of person she'd bring home to her parents after a couple of months. The exact kind of person her parents would pester for Sana to marry. The kind of person her parents would pester Sana to have kids with. If Momo were a guy, they’d love Momo. But Momo's a girl.  
 

  
Momo's a girl, and she's a girl.

  
  
  
 

♡

 

  
 

 

"Would a pretty girl like you be interested in our skin lightening cream? It's made from one hundred percen-"

  
  
“-Oh, oh sorry, I'm not interested, really," Sana politely excuses herself from the salesgirl cradling packets of product samples in her arms, and steps away from the cosmetics store and closer to the Seongsu station entrance.  
  
  
You’d see a girl in an off-sleeve checkered blouse, mouth set in a hard line with fingers jammed into denim pockets surveying indiscriminately the scene around her. You’d notice every fifth or so stranger who’d initially been about minding their own business, momentarily take note of either the annoyance on her face or her face itself. Both issues the girl herself can’t care for much right now.  
  
  
Instead, Sana’s thinking about her midget friend, or rather how late she is. You’d then see a muscle in the girl’s jaw twitch. She curses herself for calling Chaeyoung a midget, but Nayeon has a way of saying certain things in a certain way that just makes certain words, phrases, associations stick to students. Letting her eyes trace the sleek exterior of a maroon vespa as it whips past her lone figure, she recounts why Nayeon wanted to gather them together in the first place.  
  
  
_Nayeon had one of the most concerned looks on her face she’s ever seen in the two years she’s officially known her._  
  
  
_Mouth slightly agape, rapidly shoving her fullscreen, full brightness, right in front of her eyes._  
  
  
_"Sana, we're so, so screwed! Mrs Seol wants the layout done by next Wednesday for printing and-"_  
  
  
_Nayeon thrusted her phone between Sana's hands which she’d held clasped on her lap._  
  
  
_She placed a hand on her hip, ran the other through her and let out a guttural groan._  
  
  
_The boys in the front whispered._  
  
  
_Nayeon turned back and snapped, maybe a “Not now nerds!" as she always does._  
  
  
_Rested her elbows on Sana's desk, looked back at Sana and said something along the lines of "We gotta get your midget artist dream girl to finish the cover art, like, by tomorrow."_  
  
  
_Nayeon slammed her palm against the desk, used her other hand to snatch back her phone and pointed at Sana, though not accusingly._  
  
  
_"Meeting. Tomorrow. You're settling the time and place, Satang. Text the group."_  
  
  
Sana wonders if the timing she messaged Chaeyoung and the timing she messaged the group should've been a little bit further apart, takes down a small mental note to do so if future situations arise. Hitting a button on her phone, she groans and draws her lower lip between her teeth. Eighteen minutes late.  
  
  
As is with most friends of Chaeyoung’s, she wishes, half joking, half enticed, that she could have the cub in a chokehold. But, with what forbearance she has within her, she checks the clock on her phone again, this time not as a measure of how late Chaeyoung is, but rather the number of hours till she gets to speak to her.  
  
  
_Roughly four hours._  
  
  
She gathers that that's enough time for their yearbook team to handle layout issues and approve the necessary photos over brunch.  
  
  
Then Sana can handle formatting the text, proofread all three hundred and forty or so pages, compile all extra orders, and edit their superlatives page, all before Wednesday. All in Korean. Speaking of, isn't there a graded assignment for her Korean language class due Monday? And that Ethics essay draft she hasn't rectified due Tuesday? Some (knowing Mr Ok) ridiculously difficult Chemistry "pop quiz" and a experiment report due Wednesday? And not to mention homework from all subjects? Even homework for her English teacher? Who cares about Mr Im anyway? She admits that she does, somewhat. So much to do, only four days, so much to do. Only four days.  
  
  
_Only four hours._  
  
  
"Unnie! I'm so, so, so sorry, I messed up and got off at the wrong station! I'm so sorry for being late!" Chaeyoung captures Sana and her swirling mind in a soothing hug and while mild irritation creeps up a bit, it quickly dissipates as soon as she notices the pout the younger girl pulls. Sana gathers that Chaeyoung's been having a good day however, through the girl's crystal clear pronunciation. She's thankful for that.  
  
  
Taking the cub's resistant but warm hand in hers, she examines a cloudless pale blue sky assaulted with the likes of telephone lines, paint peeling off the facades of converted warehouses and bold and quirky murals on brick fronts. They walk off like that, more repeats and copies of the same distinct buildings steadily popping into view. Sana rests her cheek on the shorter girl’s newly cut locks and thinks aloud, “Why did this hipster suggest this place anyway?”  
  
  
Chaeyoung lets her boot squeak to a halt, almost knocking Sana’s cheek off with a neck-spraining force and lets out a winsome growl, “Not a hipster, unnie! And I’ve always wanted to go here… I keep seeing it on everyone’s Instagrams and it looks super pretty and you said you were treating me for doing the cover and I-“  
  
  
“I’m kidding, kidding Chaengie!” Sana explained, still slightly guilty from when she called her a "midget", since the younger girl's been sensitive about her height lately. It's always been second nature to her to treat Chaeyoung and Tzuyu with utmost love and concern, not only for their age but rather an air they give off. An aura that begs for your protection, in spite of how blasé they may be when getting doted on. Especially Tzuyu.  
  
  
The younger between them whines and nuzzles lightly into Sana's bare shoulder, despite small bumps against her nose as they speed up, getting closer to the café. She whines again, now with a hint of longing that catches Sana off guard: "Unnie, do you ever go to a place that makes you think you really wanna bring your boyfriend there?"    
  
  
Sana presses her cheek harder against the crown of Chaeyoung's head, the strong scent of strawberry attacking her nostrils as she takes in a sharp breath. "Sometimes. I don't really think about stuff like that often when they usually decide for me," she responds, unemotionally.  
  
  
Her gaze shifts from the cub to the buildings a mile, maybe two away, humming in feigned approval as her junior mumbles something about how she chose the café "because doesn't it look so cute and romantic?", because "isn't it the best place to get to know each other over coffee?"  
  
  
The extent of her gaze reaches far beyond the horizon and into the blankness of the paleness of the sky as she gets reminded of her movie date next Thursday with Minho. Only a movie, she remembers, because she has an English assignment to get done by Friday. Or was it for Monday? Did she even have an English assignment due?  
  
  
"Ah! I really wanna get a boyfriend, but now I've cut my hair, I don't know if any boy will think I'm cute. I'm really regretting this… Should I get extensions or something?" Chaeyoung runs her fingers through her boyish cut, resting them beneath her chest where her locks used to end a couple weeks ago. Her hand remains there, as if mourning the loss of something more than just hair.  
  
  
"Silly." Sana lifts her hand to calm Chaeyoung with long strokes against her wool-covered arm, a café's sign bearing much resemblance to what she'd checked online quickly coming into view. "I think you're cute. Besides, didn't you say you wanted to cut it like this after seeing Kristen Stewart with it?"  
  
  
"I found out that she's gay- er, not that there's anything wrong with it! There's definitely nothing wrong with it, loving who you love, it's just that I don't want guys to get the wrong impression of me you know?" She catches Sana's semi-detached gaze in her own apprehensive eyes. "I-I even heard some rumors about me going arou-"  
  
  
"What?! From who?"    
  
  
You'd see Sana dig her nails into the sleeves of Chaeyoung's sweater as her features contort into a wave of a multitude of emotions while her friend relays the lies she hears in whispers at school from people she doesn't know and hasn't met. You'd see the hurt in her eyes, the pain not only in the realisation of what the girl whose sheer existence brought out everything maternal in her has faced these few weeks.

  
 

But also in the realisation of how Chaeyoung, her pure, fiery little baby beast, is now fully exposed to the same ugly expectations Sana knows so,  _so_  well.  
  
  
  
♡  
  
  
  
"Fuck men," Nayeon retorts, taking a sip from her iced tea as she rolls her eyes at either the condensation wetting her hand or, possibly, men.  
  
  
The edges of Chaeyoung's lips pull tighter into a forced smile as she slides lower into her seat, a weak hand moving to cup the side of her hot chocolate. Sana notes the increased ferocity in Nayeon's speech and gives the oldest among them a quick nudge, as if to both question and silence.  
  
  
Shooting the Japanese girl a mildly apologetic glance, Nayeon wipes her fingers on a paper towelette and clears her throat. "I'm just saying… Men aren't everything and your life doesn't have to revolve around them," she explains, eyeing Chaeyoung and all the other girls of the yearbook club, sans Sana.  
  
  
"Says the reside- says Im Nayeon," one of the girls snarks, knowing smirk obscured behind her glass of a nearly-finished latte.  
  
  
"And, like, what about me? They say I fuck a ton of guys, they don't say I date them or, like, give them the attention they don't deserve. Get your facts right, babe," Nayeon haughtily rebukes. Sana rests a hand on her friend's thigh but the older girl brushes it off, runs her thumb across the back of her hand as if to cast her worries away.  
  
  
Sana knows Nayeon. Knows that the girl's softer than her reputation makes her out to be. Few recognise this, though. You'd see students converse in hushed tones about her seemingly-bitchy attitude-  louder than they do about Chaeyoung and her seemingly-butch hairstyle, softer than Nayeon does about her seemingly-many hookups with guys at parties. Intelligence isn't a common trait in their high school.  
  
  
"So anyway, there's this guy, a junior, I know, but he-"  
  
  
"Joonsoo is, honestly, kinda cute in-"  
  
  
"I might die alone, and it's because of this guy, he-"  
  
  
"Weddings are so expensive, but I want a-"  
  
  
"They said they did in the C block bathrooms, but I-"  
  
  
With restless feet ready to speed out of the café so overwhelmed with couples it's suffocating, with unresponsive ears threatening to go deaf at all the talk of boys and relationships, Sana feels herself shutting down as she lets her vision follow the swirl of foam on her barely-touched cappuccino. Drifting, flowing, ever so slightly, like clouds in a near-still sky.  
  
  
All conversations end with boy talk and, nowadays, or, whenever she has a boyfriend it seems, all conversations start with boy talk. Sana hates it and yet she's all for it. At least, all for the wherever the conversation was heading fifty minutes ago. The rest, she's spared her mental capacity the trouble of translating their blathering. No, she's all for the gushing and fawning and complimenting of her boy because she thinks  _he's_ _worthy_  of all the approval he's been getting from her friends.  
  
  
Minho's sweet and Minho's funny and Minho's so lovely to hold hands and spend time with. Minho's understanding and Minho speaks with added clarity when he's with her because he knows. Minho's got the warmest smile and the warmest hands and Minho is everything her parents want in a son-in-law. And she infers at that moment that she'll fall in love with him, eventually.  
  
  
But Nayeon sends a smack in the way of Sana's shoulder, knocking her out of her reverie, and uses her other hand to point at one of the speakers attached crudely to the corner of the shop. "Yah, Satang, it's your favorite group," she mentions nonchalantly, taking a final sip from her now empty glass.  
  
  
"Oh oh, shot another bad boy down~" Nayeon sings as she gets lost in the chorus of the song, her hands mirroring the gun-like motions of the pop group's choreography. Sana feels her chest grow warmer at the sight, now grooving to the beat as she allows herself to check her phone for the fifth time that afternoon.  
  
  
The grooving stops. Her chair is pushed so far back it slams against the paint-stripped wall behind her, causing pairs of fretful pupils to glare at her. Abruptly, Sana springs up, slinging the strap of her pink tote over her shoulder whilst snatching her phone up from the tabletop.  
  
  
"I-I gotta go, I'm late for a meeting with my dad. I-uh-I'll send the files over email okay?" Hoping the beam of her smile overshadows the distress notable in the furrow of her eyebrows, she rapidly waves at the group of girls around the two pushed-together tables. Specifically sends Chaeyoung, the only junior of the group, a sheepish smile as the latter stares at her exit, wide-mouthed, caught in disbelief.  
  
  
Bitterness of the last lie still present on her tongue, the schoolgirl tugs her tote further up her shoulder, pacing down the street with sharp clicks against the crack-plagued pavement. She doesn't know where she's heading ( _she never did_ ), but she misses the silence of her favorite park, likes the feeling of having no one watch, no one observe the erratic nature of her movements as she relays her thoughts to Momo. No one to know, no one to find out about the things she mentions, even if it's in another language.  
  
  
Luck may play in her favor today as she chances upon an open lot enclosed by concrete walls, save for an entrance in the middle. With the intensity of the mid-afternoon sun doing its worst on Sana's skin, she chooses to take a seat on the bench furthest from the glare, back facing its harsh brilliance.  
  
  
It's consistent. It's a consistent feeling of being asphyxiated by her apprehensions of speaking Korean over the phone, or by an unspoken humiliation of having to use a helpline in the first place. Consistent, sustaining, as she unlocks her phone and lets her finger stall above the "Call" button by those same seven digits.  
  
  
It's easy. Easy to let your thoughts that sprout as three a.m. nightmares permeate into daytime musings of what you're doing, why you're doing it and for how long. So she hits the call button, lets the  pseudo-calming tune ring in one ear and out the other, and thrusts a jumble of words down the other end of the line. Sana doesn't know if it's Taejoon, the one lady or the elderly man who answers the call, only knows that she presses her lips together twice, in quick succession, and is instantly put on hold.  
  
  
It's a sort of vulnerability. A vulnerability of telling someone who doesn't know you and who you don't know the very occurrences that have made you, you. She compared it to the emotional equivalent of a hookup (at least as described by Nayeon), but with the calls steadily becoming a biweekly routine for her, it's changed entirely. It's as if she was thrown into a barren plain of blinded vultures yet Momo's the protection. The metaphorical safety box. The box. Sana likes this box even if it's beginning to remind her of something else…someone else.    
  
  
" _S-chan? Hello_." The amount of warmth a light giggle can bring is beguiling. And her worries are dissipated, and her tongue is untied, and the corners of her lips curl into a tiny smile, and it's because it's Momo. It's Momo and she doesn't have to wrack her brain to anticipate advanced vocabulary, doesn't have to worry about whether her facial expressions may be conceived as inappropriate, doesn't have to hide memories, slang or references behind an affectation.  
  
  
" _You're always so punctua_ l." Another little laugh and Sana feels herself lean into the back of the bench, free hand now pressing against it to feel its pressure against her chest.  
  
  
" _What would you like to talk about today?"_  
  
  
  
  
♡  
  
  
  
  
"Okay, the blue one with the horizontal stripes or the red sundress I wore to that…b…what’s that called… it’s like… the one I wore three weeks ago to that… uh...?" she stumbles into her phone, staring down the two dresses layed neatly on her queen bed.

  
 

“Cut it, just text me babe.” Sana feels grateful once she hears the beeping of a disconnected call. It’s as if the girl she’s known for a comparatively shorter period of time already knows her as well as, or even more than, Jeongyeon or Mina do. That’s Nayeon. Nayeon is  _perceptive_. Many wouldn’t expect it - certainly not at school where one-dimensional grasps of others’ personalities are abundant.

  
 

It’s  _appalling_ , Sana thinks, that she must feel so at ease to resort to messaging Nayeon, only intermittently using translation apps, to pick out a dress for her. She wishes speaking would be this swift - as swift as the hasty tips of her thumbs tapping, swiping at her screen. As swiftly as she replied to Momo upon being asked if she wanted “ _to join in a little meeting the center’s organized”,_  one that’s “ _specially for women with issues surrounding their sexual or romantic orientation”._

  
 

As rapidly as her heart raced against her ribs, against the bench, threatening to rupture, upon hearing the Japanese volunteer not only adorably squeak out the word “ _little_ ”, but also invite her to to an event where they may meet for the very first time.

  
 

As quickly as all other introspections during the phone call were jettisoned out of her head and replaced with dreams, longings, imaginings.  

  
 

As promptly as she stood, paced around the open lot, giddily thwacking her fist against the concrete, and let Momo’s successive words of encouragement and spontaneous praise float as fragments in a wave of whimsical thought.

  
 

Because,  _wow_ , she’s meeting Momo.

  
 

As fast as she skipped out the entrance, long after Momo ended the call (once again a bit too early for their liking), titters at the back of her throat, with previous resentments at boy talk and school talk and gossip talk gone without a trace.

  
 

Because,  _oh god_ , she’s meeting Momo.

  
 

As speedily as she prepared mugs of coffee over the following few days, hazardous amounts of caffeine keeping her entirety from collapsing while she hastened to finish the yearbook, cram information into her fried brain, complete assignments and keep Mr Ok., Mr Im., Mr Kim, Mrs Kang, fat Mr Kim., her friends, her parents and her lab partner happy.

  
 

Because,  _oh fuck_ , she’s meeting Momo.

  
 

As briskly as she rushed home, paying no heed to the yearbook committee’s calls for celebration, and, despite surviving the last few days on a total of six hours of sleep, dashed up the stairs to prepare herself, both mentally and physically, for the event on Saturday.

  
 

Because,  _dear lord, in the name of all that is great and holy_ , she’s meeting Momo.

  
 

As hastily as she deciphers Nayeon’s text, the prompt vibration notifying her to wake from her reverie and decide, once and for all, what she should wear to her first meeting with Momo.

  
 

Because, yes, she lied (a reoccuring theme), and she’s not picking a dress out for her date with Minho. Because, yes, she lied about fussing over the look she’s going for with her makeup, the way she’s going to act when she sees him, the things she'll bring up in their conversation.

  
 

And it alarms her to read Nayeon’s “But y r u worrying when ur like goin to the movies w him lol”, because it’s as if the girl’s catching on, and she hastily, quickly, swiftly ignores it and chooses to drape the chosen navy skater dress gently over her chair.

  
 

And it alarms her even more to have her mother barge in just as she carelessly chucks her phone onto the sundress, which her mother stops to rest her hand on her hip and regard at.

  
 

“Wear this, the sundress makes you look nice, your boyfriend will like it.”

  
  
  
 

♡

  
  
  
 

You’d notice a girl shrink as if to hide herself behind a lamppost, one trembling hand flicking her phone up to double, triple, quadruple check her location, the other bunching at the thin crimson fabric of her dress as if to pretend it’s the palm of someone else.

  
 

Except there’s no mistaking the second floor of the medium-sized building for anything other than what Sana’s been trudging after the past fifteen minutes. Window stickers of multi-colored flags, pink triangles, miscellaneous combinations of gender symbols within hearts. The schoolgirl anxiously chuckles beneath the surgical mask (she  _swears_  it’s for the fine dust), baffled by how eagerly the corners of her eyelids crinkled at the sight of them, letting tired eyes sparkle a little.

  
 

A part of her is thankful that the walk from the station was relatively short and yet another, much larger, much louder part, curses this building for being in the heart of Seoul. Because it’s one thing to hold the back of a bench to your chest in the tranquility of an open lot or park as you speak over radio waves to a Japanese helpline volunteer about a secret you’ve kept for half a decade, and it’s another to face the physicality and corporeality and materiality of this.

  
 

Because it’s Saturday and this part of Seoul is busy on the weekends and people have eyes and they can see, and they can see Sana, and Sana doesn’t want to be seen like this. Does she even want Momo to see her like this?

  
 

The teen, fidgeting with the curled corners of worn stickers on the lamppost, especially doesn’t want the woman at the receptionist’s desk in the building lobby to see her through the glass doors. And she feels a nauseatingly familiar blankness spread over her, and she hears her thumb and index rip something off the post, and she feels a tightness of her abdomen drive a prolonged whimper out of her.

  
 

Sunlight illuminates and sunlight exposes. Sunlight emphasizes the reddish hues of Sana’s locks, which now cover a third of her face, and it brings out the honey-golden quality of her eyes. Sunlight lays bare the image of a girl cowering before the entrance to an LGBTQ center in Seoul, lays bare the image of a girl on the brink of a panic attack right before she meets a stranger who knows some parts of her more than her own mother does. Sunlight is nature’s own spotlight for Sana, and it  _illuminates_  and it  _exposes_.

  
 

And it highlights her diminished presence to another teen, only just as out of place by the distinctly foreign features of her face, who places three light fingers on Sana’s arm and questions in surprisingly smooth Korean, “Looking for the meeting today?”

  
 

One arm gripping onto the lamppost tighter, Sana jolts and stares, open-mouthed, wide-eyed, blood pressure accelerating into overdrive as if lightning struck a foot away. The girl’s sudden movement sends the other teen stumbling back, if only for a moment, before she arranges the bangs of her long, dark blonde hair back into place with a deep chortle.

  
 

“Name’s Lisa,” she initiates, and the more confident of the two stretches a hand out for the other to take in a handshake, then retracts it and lets out another laugh at Sana’s frozen form. “I get it, it’s hella frightening to come here for the first time. But they got really good snacks if you’re into that,” she reassuringly explains, trying to lighten the mood with a joke.

  
 

The blankness recedes as another memory from an all-too-familiar metaphorical box is brought forth.

  
 

A “Please come if you’re ready, S-chan! We have tasty refreshments! I mean they’re not the point but…they’re my favorite part of the meeting”, spoken with a suppressed giggle, spoken all animated, spoken all sugary, spoken like a call for someone to grow fonder for her.

  
 

She opens the box more, lets its color-coated auditory imagery, its accompanying fluttery, pastel sensations, paint pictures over the emptiness of what would’ve been her second attack in a month. The tightness of her abdomen dies so that butterflies may thrive. Sana doesn’t know what to make of this. She never did.

  
 

“So are ya coming in or nah?” Lisa sends a smirk Sana’s way (which embarrassingly sets her heart aflutter), swings a door open and gestures into the lobby with a tilt of her head. “We’re all family in here. No judgements, nada.”

  
 

Letting the lamppost breathe, free of her asphyxiating, lengthy five-minute-long chokehold, Sana shuffles towards Lisa, both slightly-less-shaky hands clutching her phone now. With barely a step into the building, the concentrated scent of lemongrass invades her sense of smell and she scrambles closer to Lisa, right sneaker letting out a squeak against the wooden tiles.

  
 

“Fuck, wow, Taejoon really stepped up his fragrance game, huh?” Lisa wondered aloud, hands resting on her hips just before smacking down hard on both of Sana’s shoulders. “O-okay, okay. Listen cutie, I gotta go to the bathroom, but take those stairs up to the second floor and enter the purple door on the right, got it?”

  
 

Sana nods, delayed, as Lisa is already dashing for the door behind the center’s reception counter, behind the one receptionist she’d been obscuring her figure from. A muffled “Sup Soohyun-unnie, bye Soohyun-unnie” escaped her lips before the door to the bathroom slams shut, and a similarly hushed hum of recognition barely leaves the receptionist’s throat, the lady still clearly preoccupied by the stacks of paperwork overflowing her desk.

  
 

Bumbling towards the stairs, unsteady hand ready to seize at its wooden rail, she examines the lobby of the center in a thoughtless visual exploration.

  
 

From the warm ivory paint pristinely set on the walls, to the warmer radiance of soothing lighting fixtures, to the assortments of awards, plaques, newspaper clippings on notice boards, to even what seems to be a waiting area comfortably furnished with low chairs, a coffee table and various LGBTQ-featuring magazines.

  
 

The receptionist pauses from her workload, peeks up, face half-obstructed by a miniature pride flag at the corner of the counter, and clears her throat as she fixes her gaze on the blundering girl. “First time here? Welcome,” she breathes.

  
 

Sana senses her muscles relax at the receptionist’s tone, manages to let the promise of a smile sneak up her lips, before turning to look towards the flight of stairs to the next floor.

  
 

A flood of air entering her lungs, followed by an equally full breath escaping her mouth, she pushes against the wooden rail, letting her foot land on the next step, then the next, and the next, all while the warmth of the ivory and the light and the cheesy decals in English preaching acceptance and hospitality wrap around her as a woolen blanket on a winter’s morning would.

  
 

Craning her head to scan the second floor, she notes an open library of pinewood shelves packed to the brim with books, both fiction and non-fiction (on sexuality and gender and history and psychology and legality and belonging, no doubt), and a brunette sat quietly with a novel in hand, and an array of doors to her right, each in a different color of the rainbow.

  
 

The coziness knit into the atmosphere blinds her from the claustrophobic nature of the hallway as she staggers down it, taking note of the respective labels on each of the bright doors. Of “Calls room”, “Meeting room” and several other rooms with labels she can’t comprehend, she finally steps before the violet-tinted door.

  
 

Luckily for her sake, not a single pair of eyes lands on her entrance into the small space, a space filled with several chairs of varying sizes and shapes and materials, with a projector screen occupying the entire extent of one of the four walls, with numerous women engrossed in chatting in their own little cliques.

  
 

So she’s left dumbfounded, confused, standing by the closed door, with nothing but the sound of a stranger’s voice playing on repeat in her head. With nothing but the compulsion to find her stranger in a group of strangers.

 

  
So Sana searches the room for any girl looking vaguely Japanese and nearly sprains her neck as she jerks her head back, eyes landing on a girl sat patiently on a plastic chair fit for children.

  
 

And,  _oh god it’s Momo_.

  
 

She feels her heart skip a beat in the most clichéd way possible for the girl who makes eye contact with her, then angles her head down to play with the slender tips of her fingers, large almond eyes hiding beneath her bangs.

  
  
And Momo's  _beautiful, so breathtakingly beautiful_.

  
  
Sana pays attention to the softness in the curves of the shape of her face, how delicate her features look (especially in comparison to the bulky chair she rests on), the innocence that radiates off of her small smile. Sana glances over the rest of her, notes how svelte, how willowy her frame is, her perfect posture, the femininity and class that her being exudes, even giggles a little at the girliness of her outfit.

  
  
Admires how put-together she is, everything from the cherry blossom earrings which graces the sides of the thin face, the flowery, pastel pink blouse paired with a brighter pink skirt. Momo runs a hand through her chestnut hair and locks Sana in yet another gaze, this time questioning, as if to ask,  _Oh, please tell me you're S-chan?_  
 

  
Everything about Momo is  _so pretty_  and just  _so lovely_.

  
  
If given the opportunity, Sana would undeniably lose herself in the girl's tender eyes, but she hears the thud of a convenience store ready meal, maybe a bottled beverage, and a high-pitched mix between a shriek and whimper and furrows her eyebrows at the source of the disruption.

  
  
A distressed figure clad in a grossly oversized black hoodie scrambles to retrieve all her items and stuffs them back in one of the many plastic bags she's holding. She stands up immediately, beams and motions a little " _sorry_ " with her hand, slightly embarrassed, at Sana, cheeks glowing a subtle pink.

  
  
Sana scans the sheepish girl's face and feels her face twitch, almost subconsciously, because wow does this girl also look incredibly Japanese. And Sana can't help but compare the bumbling dork to Momo - Momo whose features are slight in comparison to this one's fuller cheeks, this one's wider, more angular face.

  
  
Momo, whose body seems so endearingly petite in comparison to this one's sculpted, toned legs. Momo, who dresses in frilly, feminine outfits in comparison to this one's large sweater, tattered denim shorts and busted up sneakers.

  
  
Momo, who emanates a shyness with a splash of humble confidence, in comparison to this one's awkward, and frankly, if she can sense it, somewhat weirdly aloof aura.  
 

  
"I'm sorry everyone! Ha...woops!"

  
  
Momo, who- Momo, whose voice she hopes sounds more like Momo's than this one does. Because in the thickly-accented Korean she speaks, this one sounds alarmingly a lot like the Momo she's poured her heart and soul out to over the phone.  
 

  
As the girl shuffles over to the side at the side of the small room, hoodie sleeves seemingly getting in the way of her setting down light refreshments, Sana tears her gaze away from her and instead approaches the pastel cladded girl. She abruptly stands up and instinctively bows her head at Sana, greeting her formally now with another one of her slight grins.

  
  
"Hey, I'm Sana, and you're…?"  
 

  
"Hello, I-you…y-you're really cute..." Sana wants to take in the compliment, wants to fawn over how cloyingly sweet the girl sounds, but she's overcome with a tidal wave of shock and disappointment. Not from Kansai? Check. Tone too light? Check. An image shattered.

  
 

Not-Momo reveals her identity with a widening of her doe-like eyes, a jerky breath and a: "I-It's, I'm Sakura. Miyawaki Sakura."

  
  
Sana's interest in the girl exponentially drops and she's now eyeing the girl at the table, who's cheekily sneaking chips from a family-sized pack as she fills a large bowl with it. Careless (or maybe careful) enough to have some fall onto the table, where she then swiftly picks them up and chomps them down with a pleased look plastered on her face.  
 

  
"Nice to meet you", she says distracted, head still half facing the side of the room. Sana lets her raised hand rest on Sakura's arm for the shortest moment, almost out of courtesy, before hightailing towards the refreshments corner. She taps the shorter girl on her shoulder lightly and clears her throat.

  
  
"A-are you Momo?"

  
  
The girl turns, cheeks still puft with a mouthful of seaweed chips stuffed in them, and nods excitedly. She gulps her snack down and beams another time, eyes nearly closed she's so cheerful, singing: "Mhmm, that's me." She then drops the pack on the table and lets her lips part, wider. "Eh…?" Cracks an even wider smile. "Is it you S-chan?" she whispers.  
  
  
“I, u-uh, yeah...It’s me...It’s y-you…”


	4. Three; Seven plus ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Momo is care and Momo is attention.
> 
> “People are so fucking messy, Sana. They’re so. Fucking. Messy.”
> 
>  
> 
> -
> 
>  
> 
> A/N: All fully italicized dialogue is spoken in Japanese btw

The ceramic of the mug with the cartoon ostrich chicks playing along the savannah nearly scalds her as she wraps her fingers around its base. Still, she chooses to hold the cup with both hands as if it’s the most precious thing to her as she brings the brim of it to her chapped lips, freshly mixed instant coffee running down her throat, searing it like molten lava.   
  
  
Quite hastily, she sets the mug back onto the conference table, drops of the tad-too-bitter liquid splashing over the rim, marking the polished lustre of the table with dark brown dots. Bringing a quivering hand up to shield her mouth, Sana coughs into it rather violently, her ears barely registering the obtrusive creak of the lemon yellow door as it’s opened, and the thunderous slam as it’s shut.   
  
  
Slowly, as her sharp flurry of coughs start to die down, she opens her eyes to meet those of one Japanese volunteer crouching by her side, that unmistakable dialect, that low and distressed tone evident in her whispers as she asks “ _ S-chan are you alright? _ ”, “ _ S-chan, what happened? _ ”.   
  
  
All Sana wanted was some semblance of heat in this frigid room, in this frigid seat, as she rests her elbows atop this frigid table, and all she received is a singeing scorch at the back of her throat and trembling, pinkish hands.   
  
  
Well, that, and a separate kind of warmth - one which she feels as she senses the downy cotton of sweater-hidden fingers clasped tightly around her exposed upper arms. And another - another as she loosens her grip around her mouth and lets her hand fall into her lap to join the other, twiddling nervous thumbs while she meets Momo’s bright eyes in a silent gaze.    
  
  
And the fluorescence of the strip lighting above them casts two bluish rectangles upon her eyes, a stark contrast to the deep umber of her irises. And Sana entertains the idea that, perhaps, Taejoon had been right in saying that Momo offers care and attention to everyone she speaks to, as those are the only words her mind is capable of conjuring up when losing herself in those emotive eyes.

  
  


Momo is care and Momo is attention. Nothing more, nothing less.    
  
  
“ _ Was the coffee too hot? _ ” Momo questions softly as she lifts herself off her haunches to peer over on the table, pouting, eyebrows pulled together as she notices the tiny pools of coffee on its surface. Evidently in the process, those plush cotton sleeves brush against her skin as Momo releases her hold on Sana, and she finds that whilst the scorch of hot liquids lingers well, warmth disappears as quickly as it settles.   
  
  
Propping herself up, the volunteer cautiously lays the pads of her index and middle fingers on the side of the mug for the briefest of seconds, almost as a timid toddler would approach an animal at a petting zoo, and accordingly, swiftly retracts her hand. With a mumbled “ _ Aw, her mug gets hot so easily, _ ” barely audible under her breath, Momo shakes her head and prods it towards the centre of the table.   
  
  
Even as it’s faintly discernible, there’s something about the concern and worry in her voice that drives Sana’s eyebrows to knit together and compels her to adjust herself in her seat, if even for a fleeting moment. Her. Her mug. There’s a certain evocation of domesticity brought by that tone and a specific flow in the way she says it that irks Sana.   
  


  
No, that  _ shouldn’t _ irk her. So why did it? 

  
  


No, no, that’s a stupid thought - the kind that would inspire ceaseless teasing from Jeongyeon for weeks (if she were bold enough to mention such a thought to her), the kind that would spur her mother to make more comparisons between her and her father (if she were careless enough to mention such a thought to her), the kind that would necessitate more poignant one-liners from Momo (if she were foolish enough to mention such a thought to her).   
  


  
There’s the hum of the vibration of a phone against the floorboards which is promptly hushed by the girl who pulls a drooping sweater sleeve up to end whatever call was made to her by whomever.   


  
Hesitantly bringing a different mug off the floor and onto the table beside Sana’s awkwardly interlocked fingers, the words “ _ Sorry for this, you should take mine, I think it’s less hot and much cooler to the touch, _ ” runs off of Momo’s tongue as she apologises with a noticeable crack in her voice and lowered eyes. Eyes that focus on the blurs of browns and ochres of the floor instead of Sana’s bewildered ones.   


  
There’s a painful beat of silence in the room, and then, just as bitterly, another, before Sana can grab the chance to greet the warm umber and the cool blue reflections and the care of the other Japanese girl’s eyes once again. “ _ Thank you _ ,” she begins, snaking her fingers around the bright pink of the mug and bringing it closer to her chest. Although, she doesn’t finish the sentence - what with intentions of speech escaping her as she’s drawn to the illustration on the slightly discolored, slightly chipped cup.   
  


  
It’s Barbie. And Barbie doesn’t look too hot with the tiny time-worn damages in the form of scrapes across her printed face, but it’s weirdly comforting. Especially after the mess that’s been this day.   


  
Comforting in that she hasn’t seen a Barbie movie in ages, but the American character always reminded her of time spent sitting in front of the old Panasonic television watching dubbed reruns with her grandmother by her side, conversing, laughing, snacking on broad beans together.   
  
  
It’s been, how long, three years? Three years since she’s had the chance to step in that little garden, of moss-coated stepstones, of gradated varieties of cherry tomatoes, of morning glories barely awake to greet the day?   
  
  
Just like that, just reminiscing on days past at her grandmother’s two-storey house in Osaka, causes the remnants of her anxiety from the room with the purple door to float away. To a place far from awareness. Float like looming cumulonimbus clouds hurriedly, steadily, out of the frame of her bedroom window to reveal an azure similar to what she’d seen from a Miyazaki movie.   
  
  
Lifting the rim of the Barbie mug to her lips, this time with much more assurance than before, she takes a sip of a warmish matcha latté. Sana senses the heaviness of a guilt increasingly weighing down on her, though not too harshly this time, as she regards the bubbles gathering around the perimeter of the cup, and wishes for a second that she too can recede.   


  
Because she knows that Momo’s observing her take small mouthfuls of the sugary sweet beverage with the most tender of gazes. Because she knows Momo’s berry red lips are pulled up at their corners, content with Sana’s gradual dispositional shift from agitated wreck to…a much calmer wreck. 

  
  


Because Sana’s aware of all of this but Momo’s not aware of Sana’s less-than-amazing perceptions of Momo. Momo, whose presence, whose actions, whose words, whose treatment of Sana simply commands love from her.   


  
But it’s that initial impression, that gut feeling she got as the clumsy helpline volunteer stumbled into the room, that there’s an air of detachment about her.

  
  
But.  


  
But Momo  _ must _ be care,  _ must _ be attention. Nothing less, nothing more.    
  


  
After all, Minari’s told her time and time again to never judge a book by its cover. And Mina’s literally the only one in their squad who actually cares for literature outside the compulsory curriculum, so she  _ must _ be right. And so she decides to disregard any less-than-favorable impressions of Momo.   
  


  
Such as of the Momo who first looked and acted little like she’d expected her to be. The Momo who spilled nearly half of the jug of green tea over the tabletop and onto the floor, who made that questionable strangled wail as she bombarded the spill with as many paper napkins as she could grab. The Momo who Sana swears licked clean the chip dust off her fingers as she attempted a basketball-style dunk of the crumpled packaging into the garbage, only to miss by a few (many) inches.   
  
  
And keep, store, safely within that lovely box, the Momo who’d managed to keep her composure through hours of her bullshit and still manage to impart some weighty knowledge with utmost empathy. The Momo who has a voice like that song in English she’d heard aeons ago and could never find the name of, but which had nestled its wistful bass riffs, sanguine vocals and striving drum beats deep within only to pop up whenever the sky looked particularly beautiful.   
  
  
The Momo who had delicately taken Sana’s quivering hands in hers, and emphasized in the gentlest of tones, with a smile that looked as if it had been used in a thousand promises, that she’s “ _ so proud of S-chan for taking a step in becoming more comfortable with being a part of this community. _ ”   
  
  
The Momo who had unknowingly introduced Sakura to Sana for the second time that day as “ _ the center’s favorite Japanese pansexual _ ”, and had shyly suggested for them to sit together during the meeting “ _ because she’s nice company _ ”, and had mumbled pleas behind a cupped hand to the lady in charge to “let the new girl not speak if she’s too afraid to”.

  
  


The Momo who looked like she couldn’t bear to tear her gaze away from Sana’s direction while the head for the meeting went on about starting it off with introductions and icebreakers, and had tilted her head to the side almost as a question when the woman asked for those in the room to “share fears they had about coming out”.    
  
  
The Momo who noticed the uneasiness in Sana’s posture or facial expressions or body language or muteness, and had whispered a few more words to the woman to her right before timidly getting off her seat and approaching Sana’s, placing, ever so carefully, a near-weightless hand on her tense shoulder.   
  
  
And she blinked as she lifted her chin to motion towards that violet door, her then bare hand ghosting down the schoolgirl’s arm so subtly it sent shivers like a feather along her spine, till it landed somewhere around the middle of her forearm.   
  
  
And the part of Sana’s mind spared worry assumed that Momo’s jacket had been doing her wonders as she so fleetingly, so briefly appreciated the heat of Momo’s skin on hers, coupled with the solace in her sure grip, as she pulled her up and out to flee the terrifying space.   
  
  
And after checking a dark room for any occupants, Momo did switch on the lights to reveal a room devoid of personality, of a room with nothing but a whiteboard, a conference table and over a dozen chairs, and proceeded to draw one back for Sana to sit on.   
  
  
And Momo did disappear a while after crouching by Sana’s side, hand rested flush against Sana’s back, to ask demurely if she did “ _ prefer coffee over tea _ ”, only to return a little under a handful of minutes later with a mug of the stuff, the liquid nearly splashing over the brim as she set it down with a wobbly hold.   
  
  
And Momo is now dragging the once-abandoned ostrich mug to herself, a pinky around the handle, with pursed lips, and is now beginning to blow air around the surface of the coffee in circles. And the sight brings as much of a flutter about Sana’s heart as the appearance of the Barbie mug.   
  
  
Because this is Momo. Momo who, over the span of three weeks, had presented her with an ever-expanding safe of memories of honeyed, mellow coos and dreamy giggles. Momo who she’d been dying to meet ever since. So forget Sakura (even if she may be down right gorgeous and have a really pretty smile and is totally girlfriend-worthy). Forget whatever stupid “gut feeling” she had about her.    


  
Momo’s soft, Momo’s warm, Momo’s caring and Momo gives you attention.    
  


  
Interrupted by the noise of an ungraceful slurp, Sana rests her forearms on the table and leans to Momo, eager to have another glance into the girl’s eyes. However, the latter doesn’t grant her the opportunity; simply places her mug down and stares blankly into the coffee, as if she’s found everything and nothing in it at once.    


  
Perplexed at Momo’s changed mood, the schoolgirl’s lips part, a question readily materializing at the tip of her tongue, but, just as readily, she chooses to purse them as she spots the other’s chest expand upwards and subsequently contract along with the sound of a hushed exhale.   


 

“ _ Sorry. I’m truly sorry if the invitation made you feel forced to come here, _ ” Momo begins, and already, Sana wants her to stop. 

  
  


But she continues: “ _ -it’s understandable, some of my other callers are shy too, I should’ve known, I’m so sorry. What’s important is that you feel comfortable- _ ” 

  
  


Boy does Sana want Momo to just stop, want Momo to end talk about the  _ others _ , want Momo to cease the apologies because it’s enough as it is through her efforts. 

  
  


She wants to tell Momo that she doesn’t need to apologize, that Momo’s caring enough, that she’s attentive enough to her comfort with things. She wants to tell her all of this, and almost does. 

  
  


Almost, as Momo rushes in another line before Sana can utter a word, a “ _ So if you’d be more comfortable speaking over the phone- _ ”   


  
Sana scans Momo’s expression as the girl unwraps her fingers around the handle of the ostrich mug and shoves them into her front pocket, and it’s an enigma. Yes, an enigma. Sana’d learnt the word from Jeongyeon a couple weeks ago over a heated dispute about the protagonist of a novel they’d been forced to read, and in spite of previous affirmations that she’ll never use the word, she uses it now. 

  
  


Because Sana can’t describe the girl’s face as she unhurriedly presents her with a folded piece of paper otherwise.    


  
She diverts her attention, drops all thoughts of anything else, to regard the neatly creased square and inspects it, turning it and rubbing her thumb across it as she clears her throat. She feels the raised bumps where pen marks were made. “ _ This… _ ” she mutters, her tongue still pressed against her teeth as her throat grows increasingly drier, and she can’t quite pinpoint whether it’s the scald from before or not.    


  
“ _ You can call the number anytime and talk to me _ ,” Momo continues, her voice becoming more cracked, breathier with each subsequent syllable. And a part of Sana urges her to analyze this, urges her to determine if this step’ll make Sana seem more like a burden in Momo’s everyday routine than anything. 

  
  


But another part, a much more imposing, much more authoritative part of her stands its ground to force her eyes to widen and her breath to hitch at the thought of being able to converse with Momo whenever, for as long as she wants. It’s reassurance. 

  
  


Plus it’s much more personal, isn’t it? To not be limited by the obligation, the compulsion to stick to talking about her issues with her sexuality or about  _ her _ . To not be bound by the titles of “LGBTQ helpline volunteer” and “LGBTQ helpline caller”. To simply be Momo and Sana. 

  
  


Or Momo and S-chan.

  
  


“ _ Except for Sundays, u-umm… _ ” the volunteer interrupts, her articulation now impaired by mumbling, breaking Sana’s train of thought. “ _ Sundays… I have work on Sundays _ ,” she murmurs, lips still parted as she looks to Sana for her reaction. 

  
  


She’s caught off guard when the girl gives an immediate expression of incredulity, lacing her fingers together as she scrunches her face while studying Momo. “ _ Wait...don’t you have like two part time jobs? _ ” she asks, though it’s beginning to sound like an interrogation as well as look like one when Momo lowers her gaze, this time to her sneakers. 

  
  


The latter first responds with a series of incomprehensible stammers, accompanied by a statement vocalized full of creaks that Sana is just hesitant to believe: “ _ I-I do, it’s just… My Sunday job requires a lot more...uh, concentration than my other one. The other one is also more like a volunteering thing with the-uh-the… um...yeah. _ ” 

  
  


Sana can sense the unease in Momo’s tone and quickly brushes the possibility of asking any further questions away, opting instead to let her explanation slide. Occam’s Razor and all that. Why would she lie about this when she could’ve just said she’s generally busier and occupied on Sundays? So an understanding smile creeps up Sana’s lips as she gives the girl sat opposite her a drawn-out nod. 

  
  


Momo lets her shoulders fall, all traces of what once was an enigma disappearing from her face as she lifts her chin high enough to let the only light of the room bounce off her eyes. She smiles, not enough to show all her teeth, but just enough to prompt the corners of Sana’s lips to rise further as well. 

  
  


Much to the brunette’s surprise, she lets out a little laugh. In it is evidently a mixture of relief, nervousness, disbelief, and everything, both in between and not. It’s in this moment where it seems as if the both of them get lost in a state of not caring, not understanding, not realizing, not thinking, not comprehending, when they fall into a fit of giggles. 

  
  


Sana doesn’t know what’s gotten over her. She’s confused as to how Momo’s brought her on this rollercoaster of an amalgamation of so many emotions and opinions, how she should freaking feel about this Momo girl and especially what she’s doing laughing like this. Only knows that the volunteer’s laugh is like velvet and cotton and she just wants to keep Momo like this. 

  
  


But like all things in life, you can’t always get what you want. Sana recognizes this now, for the girl with those too-long sweater sleeves cupping her own face opts to abruptly let her howls simmer into softer chuckles. It’s still velvet though, still cotton. 

  
  


“ _ How did you even know I- _ ” is what the other Japanese girl blurts out before being punctuated by a hard cough, her shoulders still bouncing up and down, cheeks still flushed as a result of their unexplained hysterics. 

  
  


Though the tiniest trace of disappointment dawdles around in her, Sana decides to save Momo the trouble of speaking by first calming herself with an exaggerated exhale, then explains, “ _ -found out you had two jobs? Taejoon told me. _ ” 

  
  


“ _ Oh… _ ” Oh. That one monosyllabic word that Sana has a feeling is just aching to express more than just “ _ oh _ ” is the only thing Momo lets slip off her tongue when she feels the prompt buzz of something that starts and stops, a buzz that vibrates through the conference table, through her presently-empty mug, through her hands even. 

  
  


Those eyes, those eyes of Momo’s as she meets Sana’s in a sort of “excuse me for a moment” manner, looked too as if they promised something more than “ _ oh _ ”. Sana anticipates the more than “ _ oh _ ”, wonders what else Momo has to say, what else Momo wishes to question while the other scans through what appear to be messages briefly. 

  
  


When she sets her phone down though, Sana knows that this promise is broken, confirms it when she hears the littlest scrape of Momo’s chair against the floorboards. 

  
  


Maybe that disappointment does grow in Sana, feeds off the sight of Momo playing with the loose threads of her cuffs, twiddling them around with her thumbs in anticipation of saying something. Something not more than “ _ oh _ ”. “ _ It’s… the meeting’s ended over fifteen minutes ago...um… _ ” 

  
  


_ “And I should go _ .” Sana states, although sounding harsher, more rude, more accusatory than she’d want it to sound. To an extent, she doesn’t regret the bitterness in it; wants Momo to know without actually having to say it how much she doesn’t want to leave. Then again, she does wish she phrased it better, said it better. 

  
  


You can’t take words back and pretend like they’d never been said, but it stings to see Momo’s eyes widen at her suggestion. Stings to see the embodiment of care and attention get slapped with four unconsidered words. 

  
  


“ _ No! No! That’s not what I meant! I- _ ” Momo pleads, flustered, agitation gushing from her voice. Sana doesn't have the mental capacity to register anything else Momo says though, as she’s busy conjuring up a lie. The most innocuous of white lies to pacify both her and Momo. 

  
  


_ A white lie wouldn’t hurt _ , Sana assures herself, thinking upon the bed of half-truths, near-falsehoods and convoluted stories she’d built over her eighteen years of living and four years of knowing. 

  
  


Of “ _ No I found out about that from my friend, Mom. _ ”

  
  


Of “ _ No Dad, I wasn’t on that channel when that was on _ .” 

  
  


Of  _ “No, I didn’t do anything while you were gone, Dahyun _ .”

  
  


Upon finishing piecing together false bits of information that sound at least somewhat plausible, she hears Momo end her explanation with a “ _ -be fine with hearing you talk about issues regarding your sexuality for as long as you want, S-chan _ .  _ It’s my job any way _ !”

  
  


Her  _ job _ . It’s her  _ job _ , any way. 

  
  


And in a small meeting room with a lemon yellow door in an LGBTQ center within the heart of Seoul, you wouldn’t see two strangers, one in an oversized black sweater, one in a crimson sundress, sat opposite each other, separated only by the bulk of a conference table. You wouldn't see two friends either. Wouldn’t even see two acquaintances. 

  
  


Conversely, you’d notice two individuals now stuck somewhere between the territories of “stranger”, “friend”, “acquaintance” and “something more”. Or perhaps “something less”. A continuous shift, a never ending leaning towards one then a jolt towards the other. Separated by more than the oak between them, more than the mugs of Barbie and bunnies. 

  
  


At least one of them would agree that it’s the labels that separate them.

  
  


You’d see the girl in the red dress, push herself from the table as if making a sound other than what she’s about to say would condemn her, then slowly shifts the chair back in with a swift but gentle kick. You’d hear her say: “ _ Sorry, I just realized I got this dinner arranged with my dad and I don’t want to be late, _ ” in a tone so convincing even Sana’s guilt might buy it.

  
  


“ _Okay_ ,” the volunteer replies. In a way that Sana’s not used to - _a type of okay she’d never heard before,_ she ponders, just busying herself with checking for her belongings to pass the time, pass the silence. 

  
  


Sana twists the knob on the door and timidly glances over her shoulder to lay her sight on the Japanese helpline volunteer on last time before letting a “ _ Bye Momo” _ echo around the walls of the frigid room. With the deafening sound of a bright door shut against its frame as well as a the absence of a helpline caller in its space, silence returns once again. 

  
  


Unlike all previous conversations over the phone, Momo doesn’t get the chance to say the last goodbye, S-chan does. 

  
  


You’d notice that as S-chan passes through the claustrophobic rainbow-tinted hallway, past those newspaper clippings and decals and what-nots, she first ignores the calls from a familiar foreigner asking her “Hey cutie, you fine now?”, and then from the receptionist, telling her to “have a nice day”. 

  
  


The first thing Sana notices as she steps out the moderately sized building is the sky, and the whiteness of the puffs of stratocumuluses as they roam around its insane blueness. With haste, the schoolgirl digs for her phone, flicking it up to confirm her suspicions. 

  
  


Sunlight reflecting off the grayish navies of glass-wrapped buildings seem to taunt her, nearly blind her before she looks back to the sky, the clouds betraying her as they portray the brightness of a mid-afternoon. She grips onto her phone tighter, as if that may placate her feelings of regret and, frankly, stupidity. 

  
  


The volunteer  _ knew _ , and all she gave her was a stifled “ _ okay _ ” even as she did, like any stranger would. 

  
  


Sana would prefer to watch, in repose, the clouds rolling along without a care, without such human feelings as hers right now, but the chorus of a dance-pop song and the vibration of her phone setting tremors through her hard grip prevents this. 

  
  


“ _ Hello _ ?” she answers with a tap, the coalescing of smaller wisps of clouds into larger forms still occupying her vision. 

  
  


“ _ Ah, Sana, I see you’re beginning to use more Japanese now. _ ” The same carefree tone and deep, loud voice of her father assaults her right ear, though it rung in a way that sounds so weirdly nostalgic. So it soon registers that her dad spoke in Japanese, a rare occurrence ever since she’d asked for her parents to start conversing with her in Korean. 

  
  


Because she wanted “ _ to fit in _ ”, because she “ _ hates how everyone calls her the ‘Japanese girl’ instead of Sana _ ”, because she wanted “ _ to just be normal” _ . Because she wants “to just be normal”.

  
  


She only ever hears it when she comes out of her room after midnight, when her dad’s outside by the towering camphor tree, when Sana can just about make out his dark figure, make out his agitated whispers between cigarette puffs as he speaks to his colleagues. 

  
  


“Dad, what’s up?” She switches to Korean. 

  
  


“Eh...Well your mother’s asking if you’ll be back from shopping soon.” She hears the disappointment in his voice, hears the awkwardness, hears the want to say more, somewhere between “ _ okay _ ” and “ _ oh _ ”. Much like the situation with the helpline volunteer, she too lets it slide, doesn’t mention it, doesn’t bring it up. 

  
  


“Yeah,” Sana replies, a non-answer to stall time as she wraps her arm around the lamppost that kept her up just about an hour ago. “I’ll be home by four,” she elaborates, letting go of a shaky breath while her fingers hold onto the metal tighter. 

  
  
  
  


♡

  
  
  


“Ahh! No, unnie, I’m sticky!” Chaeyoung whines, her auburn-haired senior carelessly holding on to her, tightening her embrace in spite of the younger one’s sweat-drenched shirt. Nonetheless, the cub can’t help but sink into Sana’s hug; the girl always gave the warmest, most assuring ones. 

  
  


With them still locked in a hug, rocking back and forth between tired feet, after she presses a kiss to the crown of Chaeyoung’s head, Sana shouts aloud into the dance studio, screaming: “Unnie doesn’t care!” To which all Chaeyoung can reply with is a hearty laugh - the kind of laugh that sends either insulin or auxin or oxytocin or whatever motherly hormone they’d learnt in Biology speeding through every part of her. 

  
  


It’s getting late and she’s got dinner plans with Nayeon, but the need to provide some love and to baby her favorite junior (who’d also recently been gossiped about yet again, by those ignorant kids,  _ idiots _ ) simply overpowered her. 

  
  


Sana’s read up on hugging, or at least the science of it. And while she’d confidently refute any ideas of her being a Hug Scientist, she can vouch to confirm that the feeling of holding someone, something, anything, is one of the greatest feelings of all. Is one of the most distracting feelings.

  
  


It soothes and it placates and it purges stray thoughts of Japanese helpline volunteers who only ever speak about your sexuality and your identity and how you’re going to confront not only the people of your past but the emotions and the memories all jumbled and muddled together. 

  
  


She just wishes Chaeyoung was warmer. 

  
  


“Can I have one too Unnie?” a soft voice asks from behind Sana. And so she lets her hand fall from Chaeyoung’s waist to turn around, finding Tzuyu stood in the middle of the room with one hand gripped firmly onto the strap of her duffel bag, the other limp by her side, just the slightest indication of a call for affection by the way she twists out her wrist. 

  
  


If you were to ask anyone in this school, you’d find out fairly quickly how Chou Tzuyu’s got a certain reputation among the juniors here. The classic foreign beauty, the puzzling introvert with those same boys (namely the infamous basketball boy Choi Joonhyo) who’d grovel at her feet if she so said the word, the one few can really say anything about despite being ‘everyone’s friend’. 

  
  


You’d also uncover (much to many boys’ chagrin and much to the gossips’ interests) that the Taiwanese girl never quite liked any form of intimacy (sans Chaeyoung’s of course - the two are inseparable), almost flinching if anyone’s within close proximity. Many chalk it up to being up to cultural differences, though. 

  
  


Do the Taiwanese really not like intimacy? 

  
  


Feeling special because of this, Sana gladly runs into Tzuyu with arms held wide, clashing into her, an animated “wee!” escaping her throat upon wrapping her arms around the taller one’s neck. Her junior may respond with nothing but a suppressed chuckle and a light pat on her back, but Sana’s sure that it’s enough from Tzuyu to send that auxin pumping hard through her veins. 

  
  


“Tzuyu-yah, we need to get home before your mom calls!” a concerned voice yells from the corner of the room. The shortest of the three’s already at the exit, shoulder bearing a bag half the size of her frame, a foot stuck between the the door and its frame, eyes impatiently looking to her phone, then to Tzuyu, then back to her screen again. 

  
  


Finally content with the length of their hug, Sana removes her arms from around her neck, only pausing for a moment to give Tzuyu a little pat on her head (a bit of a habit, she must admit), and waves the departing duo goodbye. 

  
  


It’d always been the two of them, be it as seatmates in the classes they shared or buddies who’d always take the subway home together. And Sana always wonders, especially when they’re stood side by side or even as they’re holding hands, if it’s Chaeyoung taking care of Tzuyu or Tzuyu taking care of Chaeyoung. 

  
  


She (and many others) would bet on first glance that it’s the latter, would even bet on second glance, yet there’s that precautionary stance that the cub always has about her when Tzuyu’s surrounded by her admirers which would lead her to believe otherwise. Though Sana admits that it’s to be expected, because wouldn’t Tzuyu do the same if Chaeyoung had as rabid a following as her? 

  
  


First grabbing her bag from a piano chair by one of the large speakers and unplugging her phone from its jack, she then rips her fluffy pink hair tie off, letting messy locks fall onto her shoulders. She sighs then and there, into an empty room once charged with the energy of twelve girls, a dozen pairs of sneakers creating their own music against squeaky floor tiles as they attempted to choreograph to some forgotten Gotye song from years back. 

  
  


She sighs again, now into the darkness once she flicks off the light switch, her arm dropping to the door knob as she counts the hardly visible stray hairs that tickle her face. And blows them away before letting herself out of a room that’s usually like any other dance studio she’s ever been to, but now seems as frigid as a particular room in a particular center with a particular door. 

  
  


The dance studio. Dance. The  _ dancer _ . Sana suspects that an increasing number of thoughts running through her conscience will eventually hop, skip and spring their way into reminding her of the girl she’d been (unsuccessfully) avoiding and (even more unsuccessfully) ignoring the past few days. 

  
  


Sana supposes, waltzing over to the traffic light just outside the school gates and resting an elbow on the head of a barrier by it, that it’s like that silly science experiment with the horseshoe magnets she did when she was ten. 

  
  


However trite it may be, she can’t fathom describing it any other way. That even if she tries to resist the volunteer, and chiefy if she does make some desperate attempt at two in the morning to pull herself from her, to forget about her eyes, her voice, her warmth, her touch, that care, that attention-

  
  


Momo’s a positive force, entirely magnetic, and it’s so easy to cave in. To just cave and recall that conversation she had with the raven-haired sweetheart on Monday, by that man-made pond on that bench with the scrapes (like that Barbie mug) from her nails as they clawed while she sobbed all those weeks ago. 

  
  


She’s positive in that she decided against giving any indication that she did recognize or remember the lie, positive in that she decided to instead speak, like saccharine, and mask any resentment. How professional of Momo, and how like any other helpline volunteer, how like one would act according to the requirements of their  _ job _ . 

  
  


But sweet nonetheless. 

  
  


She scratches her nail against the back of her phone while it’s still in her pocket - the slightest manifestation of her itch to unlock it and read the same string of messages again. With all her will power mustered against doing this though, Sana doesn’t proceed to cave in. 

  
  


Sana looks up instead. Admires the form and color of the clouds no matter how yellowish they may be, their bottoms tainted by the incandescence of street lights and lit signs of the bustling inner city. Follows the gradient of the night sky as they approach a muddied navy closer to the ground, closer to the office buildings where salarymen work overtime under the glare of strip lights. 

  
  


Lights like those reflected off of Momo’s deep umber eyes, like the one in the meeting room where they held their respective mugs as they went into hysterics for absolutely no reason at all, other than the hilarity of the moment, the hilarity of what they were and weren’t. Lights unlike the sunlight Sana remembers so clearly, which near melted her face off as she tried to guide Momo off from speaking about their secret. 

  
  


Maybe that Monday taught Sana about how while Momo was care and attention, how she was also just a LGBTQ helpline volunteer with the initial impression of S-chan as an anxious, bawling mess of an eighteen-year-old who did stupid things because of her stupid then-recently discovered sexuality. Sana gathers that Momo was presented with an issue and so she feels compelled to help her resolve it no matter how long it may take. 

  
  


What Momo signed up for was assisting people with doubts or concerns regarding their sexuality or gender, not a schoolgirl with a bizarre fondness for her words and her warmth, not a girl who wants to share everyday musings and thoughts and ideas of life, of the future, of love and of music. Even the simplest of tangents of “ _ Can you recommend any dramas?” _ or “ _ Momo, what’s the point of weddings?” _ are swept under the rug and swiftly replaced with prompts of “ _ S-chan, have you planned for what you’ll do when confronting her?” _

  
  


It’s bold, Sana maintains, bold of Momo to assume that she’d been thinking about  _ her _ for longer than a femtosecond at a time, as if doing so were as painless as betraying her all those years ago, as if doing so was as easy as falling for her all those years ago. As if doing so is as inviting as pulling out her phone from her sweatpants’ pocket and scrolling through Momo’s sent messages. 

  
  


Sana caves. She always does. Momo’s magnetic, and it’s almost as if the universe had engineered her to ultimately be as enchanted by her existence like a moth to a flame, no matter the gut instincts, the Sakuras, the spills, the clumsiness, the detachment. So with the sound of little bells being rung as three school children rush by on their bicycles, with the clinks and clanks of steel dinnerware among the slurps of hungry customers huddled in a small noodle stall, Sana’s eyes soften as she reads four texts.

  
  


[4 days ago, 14:12] Momo:  _ Hi S-chan :3 If you’d like to talk more about the issues surrounding your sexuality, you can always call me! Remember to think about how you’re going to arrange to talk to her. _

  
  


[3 days ago, 17:23] Momo:  _ Hi S-chan! If you want to talk more about her or any issues regarding your sexuality, call me! I’ll be here.  _

  
  


[2 days ago, 09:50] Momo:  _ Hi S-chan (^•^) If you’d want to talk more about things surrounding your sexuality, you can definitely call me! I’m here! _

  
  


[Yesterday, 16:37] Momo:  _ Hello S-chan! Want to talk more about your difficulties with your sexual identity? You can always call me, I’ll be here _ . 

  
  


She always says she’ll be there for her. And Sana understands why now. 

  
  


“Satangie!”

  
  


It is then where any sober being would notice a wobbling fool with her school blouse left untucked, her maroon tie wrapped around her wrist, with the goofiest of smiles plastered on a noticeably flushed face stumbling towards a girl stood in the middle of a quiet street, face illuminated by the light of her phone’s screen. 

  
  


“Hey babe, did you know that soju’s a silent killer~” the very visibly drunk schoolgirl sings, forcing an arm around the other’s neck. Hastily, Sana shoves her phone back into its place and, rests a steady hand upon Nayeon’s tie-wrapped fingers. 

  
  


Not unlike a shepherd to lost sheep, Sana ushers Nayeon in the direction of the nearest McDonald’s, surmising that the underpaid teenage employees there wouldn’t mind a drunk as loud as she is. “Unnie, you drank too much after school. Again,” she complains, through half-gritted teeth.

  
  


With her shoulder becoming more sore by the second (what with Nayeon resting what feels like her  _ entire goddamn _ body weight and then some on her), Sana pulls away just as Nayeon whispers something under her soju-reeking breath, stating: “Bitch, I think Jeongyeon’s got, like, a fuckbuddy or something, like….what….” 

  
  


“She just, like...goes...like just goes?” she elaborates, one free arm gesturing sloppily around the air, momentarily pointing to the light of a lamppost as they walk under it. “And to where? And to who?” she asks, her bobbing head now resting on the other’s aching shoulder. Sana doesn’t know how to react, how to respond, especially with an out-of-her-senses Nayeon clinging onto her for support. 

  
  


Trust is an iffy topic when it comes to Im Nayeon given her reputation and the accusations thrown about in the school bathrooms, yet if only the girl was sober, Sana would be inclined to believe her and her observant eyes. But this is Jeongyeon, Yoo Jeongyeon, one of her closest friends, the girl who’d go on for ages about the tiniest incident, who’d been nothing but a listening ear to her verbose ramblings about her relationship with Minho. 

  
  


Putting an investigation (as well as that date Minho’d asked her to think about) down onto her ever-growing list of things to worry about, Sana ignores the comment (just as she did Momo’s messages) and chooses to direct the conversation into, what she considers to be, infinitely more pressing issues, sighing: “We were supposed to talk about our English assignment over dinner, not gossip about Jeong…”

  
  


“I’m not gossiping!” Nayeon continues, and Sana can just about make out a sliver of hurt in the slight crack of her voice. “I’m just...like, you know, saying…”she mumbles, chaotically releasing herself from Sana’s grip and leaning over the red and yellow LED sign by the fast food restaurant. Nayeon angles her head to lay her cheek against the plastic frame of the sign, breathing: “Where does she go?” before turning to regard Sana. 

  
  


“Where do  _ you _ go?” 

  
  


Sana traces the pleas and the genuine bewilderment written in the crinkle of Nayeon’s nose and the knit of her brows and the tightness around her lips. 

  
  


You’d see two girls frozen, in two different states of upset, with the clinical lighting of the golden arches coupled with the multicolor of humming vending machines striking their differing expressions. In another world, Sana would say something, anything to rid Nayeon of her puzzled frown. Another world, not this one - in this world, Sana feels the pang of hunger rumble through her stomach and, with the downward tilt of her head to avoid burning eyes, yanks at the cold handle of the glass doors. 

  
  


“You’re drunk,” Sana sighs, tugging at Nayeon’s sleeve to lead her into the nearly dead joint. Continuing into one of the less occupied corners of the place, as far away from the group of cackling teenagers as can be, Sana pulls a chair out for Nayeon and rolls her eyes as the older girl plops down, head smacking against a ketchup stained table. “At least go drink after you finish Mr Im’s assignment, it’s d-”

  
  


“Oh my god, who fucking cares about Mr Im?” Nayeon hollers, drawing, if only for a split second, the attention of the hooligans in their black hoodies. 

  
  


“Nayeon!” Grabbing a chair, Sana takes a seat next to the girl with her fingers clenching locks of unkempt hair and cups her pinkish face. She places her index against her lips, shushes the other girl as she scans the rest of the restaurant and lifts Nayeon’s face so that their eyes may meet. 

  
  


But the other girl flinches, grappling Sana around her wrist and whining emphatically. Nayeon looks around the restaurant, at the gangs of kids and the elderly couple sharing their fries and the lonely businessmen chowing down on anemic-looking burgers, and disregards them, yelling: “Fuck school man! Fuck Mr Im! Mr Im can go suck a dick and die for all I care! Motherfucking ass-”

  
  


“Nayeon what the hell? What are you talking about?” Sana combs her fingers through her hair and wonders, whilst Nayeon is in the middle of formulating her next sentence in her slogging brain, if Momo would know how to reply to Nayeon. And entertains, just as Nayeon parts her lips with the start of a pungent statement at the gate of it, how Momo would offer advice to someone like Nayeon. 

  
  


Momo is care and attention, and Nayeon’s… a different, peculiar, inexplicable strain of care, an unexplainable, mysterious, yet palpable strain of attention. 

  
  


“What...I’m...Saying! Is! Fuck him!” the drunken girl stresses, punctuating each syllable with the slam of the back of her palm against the tabletop. 

  
  


“Nay, he’s our teacher...And he can actually teach, like I can actually get what he’s talking about and you know how piss-poor my English is!”

  
  


“You...You’re like...You’re like so naive, Satangie. So fucking naive you don’t even know. I…” Nayeon bores holes into the table with eyes devoid of their sparkle, with a simper pulled incredibly tight, with a look so enigmatic it’s beginning to seem familiar. “It’s like with the juniors who, like, spread shit about manic pixie midget girl,” she continues, her tone as bitter as instant coffee. 

  
  


Sana remembers, her fingers clasped over the edge of the table to hold onto its substance, how she’d mentioned Chaeyoung’s rumor mill to the older girl in the hopes of her using her social magic to quell them. 

  
  


“Like...hippie’s friends could’ve started the goss, and you wouldn’t have a goddamn clue. Fake shit. It’s so-o common in our school or just...anywhere babe,” Nayeon clarifies, the loudness of her speech eventually settling into a whisper. “It’s the real innocent looking ones who fuck you up and ruin you and just leave you there, like…” 

  
  


Nayeon looks into nothing, and Sana is sure that she’d seen that same look on another’s face before. So the younger girl hides her bottom lip beneath her front teeth and examines her options on the too-bright, too-colorful menu on five large screens, a symphony of the jingle of the main door’s bell as another satisfied customer leaves, of the cascading of sodas into paper cups, of the ka-ching of a cash register in front of a displeased employee playing for her to cloud her mind with. 

  
  


Sana doesn’t look back as Nayeon clears her throat, doesn’t even look back as she utters: “Sometimes I envy the loners. You know? People with like three friends. A couple of really good friends and just stick with them and not give a rat’s ass about anyone else.” 

  
  


Pushing her chair back with her foot, Sana gets off of the table and straightens out the imaginary creases on her sweatpants, questioning in the lowest of indoor voices: “Nayeon...I...I’m gonna go get some food. You want your usual right? The chicke-”

  
  


Nayeon being Nayeon, she interrupts, bursting, proclaiming with one hand pressed to her forehead, the other turned out as if it could help in her explanation: “Then again, I know a loner wh-...” Unlike the Nayeon Sana’s used to, she puts an end to the sentence that promised more and instead opts for a puzzling “Never mind.”

  
  


“People are so fucking messy, Sana. They’re so. Fucking. Messy.”

  
  


The statement rings within her, echoes throughout the walls of her mind. Not for its finality though; there isn’t a troubling finality in her voice, but an agony that stinks of experience, smells of a torment she resonates with. Sana gathers the courage to reply with an “I know, I-”

  
  


To be abruptly cut off with a “Do you really? Huh?” 

  
  


“Do you really know that, Sana?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @hiraimonet if y'all wanna cry about samo tgt


	5. Four; Four (plus seven plus three plus eight) plus nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Sana, who hurt you?"
> 
> "You know you can tell me anything, right? Sana?”

"Mingo knows you well, Shasha!"   
  


  
Both of the sides of her jaws are propped by the bases of her palms, her fingers curled to press against her full cheeks, her pinkies just about able to feel the muscles in her mouth pull up to give her boy a smile. Sana feels a warmth bloom in her. Not the type of warmth blossomed by a touch or a presence, nor the kind transferred between close bodies; a type of warmth of knowing that there's someone who gets you.   
  


  
Even if it may be through a warped perception of things. Even if through the silly gift of a large unicorn plush, with googly eyes that spin with a little shake, with pearlescent sequins for hooves. Removing a hand from underneath her jawline, she digs into the puft pink back of the unicorn and mimics a gallop (with added neighs and whinnies, of course) towards Minho's face. Sana attacks the side of her boyfriend's face, a genuine giggle escaping from the gaps of where her teeth meet her tongue.  
  


  
"Ay, ay!" Minho flails his arms about, bearing his teeth and wrinkling his nose, pauses for a moment to swat at thin air, cautiously, exaggeratedly. As Sana brings the plushie back into her arms, squishing the toy snug against the warmth in her chest, she hears his boisterous laughter and subconsciously decides to add her own chuckles into the mix.   
  


  
There's a bunch of boys with their dirtied shirts and their grass-stained knees playing soccer in the middle of the school field, and they're always obnoxiously noisy, annoyingly rough with their careless kicks. Sana can almost say that she's thankful though, near to grateful for their background commotions. She doesn't know how she could ever survive pure silence next to Minho - a silence she'd get if there weren't a gang of roughlings shouting and cursing right now as their laughs fade into awkward grins.   
  


  
With her fingers still dug into the fabric of the unicorn, soft grass carded between the fingers of her other hand, Sana gazes at her boy as he runs his hand through his curly black hair. Moving on to pat and stroke the mane of the marshmallow-like toy, Sana concludes, after a few minutes of careful deliberation, that Minho's laughter is akin to leather. If Chaeyoung's is felt, Nayeon's is wool and cotton and velvet belong to a certain someone else, then Minho's must be leather.   
  


  
Leather is good. Everyone likes leather, Sana assures herself. Her mother likes leather both faux and real: her wardrobe’s filled with leather purses and leather suitcases and leather coats; leather upon leather.

  
  


So when Minho leaves his hand at the back of his neck, massaging it lightly, and scoots closer to Sana’s side, and asks lowly, stutters a bit, if he could kiss her whilst staring at her bubblegum-pink lips, she mirrors him. Inches forward so their knees barely touch, drops her gaze to trace the form of lips she’d never really got around to studying and rushes a nod, not wanting to look too hesitant.

  
  


Sana closes her eyes in anticipation, clarifying her submission to his advance, and feels an uneasiness and anxiety spread in her chest. Not the kind started with the flutter of butterflies, neither the kind originating from repulsion or fear. A specific anxiety that comes from not knowing if she’d gestured that she wanted it because she wanted it or if she nodded to tell herself that she should want it.

  
  


Either way, his kiss is like fine leather, too. It is as dead, as inanimate to her as the hide of a slaughtered cow, all whilst being sloppy and overdone. Nonetheless, she cracks a smile mid-kiss because she knows he’d be able to feel it, and _show, don’t tell_ , even if it means lying about his technique (or lack thereof). _Because it’s his first kiss_ , Sana reminds herself, _because it’s still far better than her own accidental first kiss with that Tadashi boy when she was ten._

  
  


“Woah!” Minho exclaims, falling back onto the grass with his arms outstretched. He scoffs, more out of disbelief than anything malicious, and remains down with a smile wider than any other Sana’d seen from him. So she smiles too, even through the bitterness of the canned coffee he always sips on which settles on her lips, and observes as the ruckus from the middle of the field dies down. The boys hurriedly slapping the backs of each other’s jerseys, Sana purses her lips to the end of their noise and to the birth of an uncomfortable stillness.

  
  


“That was-”

  
  


“Hey! Look! It’s Chaeyoung!” Sana hollers and signals towards two girls sat on the benches nearby while digging her fingernails into her boyfriend’s blazer’s cuff. Slinging her Hello Kitty backpack (now with the slightest hint of green tinting its otherwise purely white cheek) over her shoulders, she then scrambles up with the plushie trapped under her arm, tugging the full weight of Minho along with her, explaining: “Come on, I wanna check up on her!”

  
  


Minho resists a little, placing a light hand on Sana’s wrist and says, with lovestruck eyes but with a brush of amusement visible in his expression: “Hold on, hold on Shasha, Mingo has to pack his things.” Perhaps a tad too promptly, the schoolgirl lets go off his cuff and probably a bit too gleefully, she smiles such that the bottoms of her front teeth peek out, to the sound of him telling her to “just go without Mingo first”, and that he’d “catch up with Shasha A.S.A.P.”.

  
  


Dashing past the pack of boys, half of whom she knows somewhat and directs a careless wave to, Sana feels her heart speed up at the sight of her two favorite juniors sat side by side, examining a couple cards laid out in an orderly row on the table with wide, entertained eyes, totally engrossed in… whatever they’re doing. She wipes her lips and the bitterness and the discomfort against the sleeve of her blouse, and greets, with a squeal, the two girls she had actually noticed half an hour ago.

  
  


“Chaeng! Yoda!”

  
  


Practically body slamming into both of their backs, Sana wraps her arms around the juniors’ necks and sticks her head between both their cheeks, rubbing her own against them as if she hadn’t already met them the day before for dance practice. Then, after processing that _maybe_ Tzuyu wouldn’t be too comfortable with extended periods of intimacy, Sana lets the youngest of the two go whilst simultaneously trapping the other in her signature tight embrace.

  
  


Like a bursting bundle of excitement, Sana sits herself down right next to Chaeyoung, hands still clasped around the side of the younger one’s waist. And, as if she’d been dying to do so, the brunette plants soft pecks along the length of Chaeyoung’s face, to be met with the latter’s amplified screeches and (only) a half-serious “Unnie, stop!” between sweet giggles.

  
  


Here is when you, if you were observant enough, would be able to take note of the most miniscule changes in Tzuyu - the way she shifts her gaze to meet the cards on the table instead of the pair, her barely visible smile forced into a larger, although not as sincere one, the way she rubs her thumbs over her skirt under the table. You wouldn’t be able to tell, though, what these little differences mean or what they signal. Anyone would wonder if she was jealous or unhappy or conflicted, but only Chaeyoung would be able to give you an answer.

  
  


“Ooh… What are these?” Sana unclasps one of her hands and holds up, with the hint of a pout appearing, a card from the tabletop that’s a little bigger, a little longer than typical poker cards, and with the ominous image of an armored skeleton riding on horseback holding up a black flag printed upon it vintage-style. Below the image is a simple word in English that Sana’s sure she’s seen before, but it escapes her mind now.

  
  


“Tarot cards!” Chaeyoung beams. She gathers the cards left on the table and stacks them back onto the rest of the deck, giving them a shuffle as she meets Tzuyu’s eyes. “I was giving Chewy a reading, but we’re done so…” Chaeyoung pauses mid-shuffle and shifts her attention to Sana, her smile morphing into a sneaky grin as she says: “Do you want one?”

  
  


“Ah Shasha this stuff’s fake but you gotta do it!”

  
  


Minho startles Sana with a heavy hand briefly striking her shoulder, to which his girlfriend picks the unicorn plush up off the tabletop and rams its fuzzy muzzle against his chest. “Oppa!” Sana regards him with knitted brows and an overplayed sulk for a moment (enough to get a decently contented sigh out of him), then wraps both arms around Chaeyoung once again and rests her chin on her shoulder. “Chaeyoung is… Of course I’d want a reading Chaengie!” she says with an animated glimmer about her eyes.

  
  


“Unnie, do you want a romantic relationship reading?” Chaeyoung cocks her head a little for Sana’s sake but is met with a too-eager Minho nodding enthusiastically, stood awkwardly behind the seated trio. He opens his mouth as a glaring indication that he’s got something to say, but she hushes him with a: “-I’ll take that as a yes.”

  
  


Chaeyoung senses Sana’s lips slowly getting closer to her cheek, and with Minho’s presence in mind, clears her throat rather loudly as she moves away from the Japanese girl and fans her deck out on the table. “Pick three cards please!” she requests a bemused Sana, the latter’s fingers now ghosting over her shirt as they make their way towards her lap. “First one’s about your past affecting you now, second one’s about your present and the last is for...your future?”she continues, and pauses to assure herself, ending with a “Yep!”

  
  


Without batting an eye, Sana picks three cards and sets them on the table: the first she chooses is from the top of the deck, the next is the bottommost card, the last is one from somewhere in between. Chaeyoung flips them over and bites her bottom lip, much to Sana’s bewilderment. The oldest girl of the bunch examines the illustrations on the three cards she’s chosen; their puzzling captions wouldn’t tell her anything anyway.

  
  


The first portrays a mischievous man sneaking away with five swords, two others still stuck in the earth. The second is of three identical swords pierced into a heart amidst a thunderstorm. The last shows a woman bound and blindfolded, encircled by eight of those same swords piercing the ground beneath her bare feet. Of course, this imagery isn’t _too_ appealing. To any of them. Four faces bear four similar expressions deprived of optimism, and one of them breaks the silence with a “Swords...Okay, so…”

  
  


“...Seven of swords?” Chaeyoung nods, and flashes a ridiculously forced smile at Sana. “Either you betrayed someone or you got betrayed, unnie, can’t tell which one it is though… All I know is that it’s affected you a lot,” she explains, the loudness of her voice tapering off into a near whisper, as if she only wanted the girl beside her to hear her, only wanted the girl sat frozen like a deer in the headlights to feel her sympathy.

  
  


Sana thinks Chaeyoung’s words over in her head, and wonders if she’s translated it right, hopes she’s gotten it wrong. Can't mistranslate pictures though. 

  
  


Feeling an unsettling air of seriousness loom over the bench, Minho bursts into a loud cackle, jokingly asking with a light nudge into Sana’s back: “Sana, who _hurt_ you?”

  
  


Who hurt _her_?

  
  


The brunette blinks once, twice, shakes her head to bring her back to the situation and suggests, trepidation recognizable in her tone, for them to “just move o-”

  
  


“Satang! Do you know where Nabongs is!?”

  
  


With loud and banging footfalls against the concrete of the courtyard, Jeongyeon appears in front of the four in an instant, hair unkempt and breath heavy from exertion, she places both hands flat on the table and stares each one of them down for good measure (sans Minho, of course).

  
  


“Huh? W-why?” Sana replies with added concern in her voice, noting the fear laced in Jeongyeon’s expression.

  
  


“Jennie texted me, she said she got into a-a fight or something!” Jeongyeon hesitates as she fiddles with her phone for a bit, though chooses to shove it back into her pocket and breathe out a weary and shaken: “S-said she… punched some dude?”

  
  


“Holy sh…” the Japanese girl starts, then stops when she’s reminded of Minho as the boy lays a comforting hand on her shoulder. Him and Chaeyoung and Tzuyu of course, she’d never curse in front of them. So she continues with a question instead, “Why would she?”

  
  


Jeongyeon lets her head hang, her eyes so low Sana can’t tell if she’s lost in the texture of the bench or the grayness of the concrete floor. “I don’t know,” the older girl admits with that tinge of helplessness uncharacteristic of your typical Jeongyeon. She meets Sana’s eyes, turns out one hand as if asking for something, and, with her voice so hoarse it’s on the brink of breaking, says: “I’ve been trying to find out but I can’t find her! I’ve been running around A Block but she’s not there so-”

  
  


There’s the unmistakable sound of the main door to the courtyard being slammed against the adjacent brick wall, followed by hurried stomps over to one of the many benches by the field. “Come on fuckers, we’re going to sing and get wasted!” a more unmistakable voice hollers. “T.G.I.F! Woo!” the girl screams with her arms held up to the sky, each syllable clicking off her tongue like pure fire.

  
  


“Im Nayeon!” Jeongyeon yells almost on instinct, and she scrambles to examine her friend for any injuries, as if she’d had the exact scenario play in her head once before. And Sana spots them. Anyone this side of C Block could probably spot the bruising forming over three of _the_ Im Nayeon’s knuckles, as well as the oozing of fresh blood over one of them. The other students this side of C Block would have probably anticipated something like this occurring too.

  
  


“I'll be fine if you, like, come to noraebang.” Nayeon waves Jeongyeon’s worries over her injury away, but the latter faces her with a sorry look she feels she’s seen one too many times. “Fine then, have fun with your boyf instead of us,” she snaps. And it burns Jeongyeon like acid, a dent appearing between her eyebrows the more fire she spits, saying: “I hope his dick’s worth our friendship.”

  
  


Nayeon grabs Sana by her backpack and hauls her off of her seat at the bench, crying: “Come, babe. Jen and tutu-girl are waiting for us.” Thoroughly surprised at Nayeon’s unusual demeanor, Sana reluctantly agrees through compliance, following the girl’s demands with a apologetic nod to (first) her boy, and Chaeyoung, Tzuyu and Jeongyeon. She gestures a “call me” to Jeongyeon, even mouths it, but the older girl looks away, awkwardly shifting in her blazer.

  
  


“Wait, wait, unnie!” a little loud voice exclaims, and a frazzled Chaeyoung holding a sealed envelope pops back into Sana’s line of vision. Sana halts Nayeon’s beelining towards the parking lot just in time for the younger girl to pass her senior the cream-colored envelope and look down shyly,  murmuring a “You’re invited to my birthday next week… and I’d love it if you come.”

  
  


And Sana meets Chaeyoung’s wide, anticipating eyes with a small smile and an eager nod, as if to say “you wouldn’t need to ask”. The smile the shorter girl returns her would’ve done more good for her too had her boyfriend not also jumped into her periphery, shouting:  

  
  


“I-I’ll text you, Shasha! Mingo’ll miss you!”

  
  
  
  


♡

  
  
  
  


“가까이 할수록 널 다치게 할걸~”

  
  


Sana’s half-aware of how the state of the cramped room got to where it is right now. Maybe a quarter aware of how the other girls had managed to turn on the nauseatingly psychedelic disco ball at the center of the table halfway through their alcohol binge (or maybe she’d done it). With a far-gone Nayeon taking the lead, belting out melodies to a soul-infused pop song she hasn’t heard since middle school, a tamborine-yielding Jennie messily providing adlibs and a giggly Mina picking old Super Junior songs out for their playlist, the brunette feels a wave of déjà vu hit her.

  
  


Or perhaps that’s the cheap vodka deciding to strike her in all its intoxicating glory.

  
  


Her abs hurt like hell, ankles a little wobbly from whatever gymnastics or couch-top dancing she’d done throughout the night. Although her upper torso struggles to keep her upright, Sana succeeds in grabbing the only empty bottle on the table (not that there were many bottles on it to begin with), slumping back into her seat not a millisecond later. Holding the thing smelling of ethanol and stupidity like she would the unicorn toy had she had it, the girl sneaks her hand into the crook of Jennie’s arm and snuggles into her shoulder.

  
  


Her blouse is infused with Chanel no.5 and detergent and lime and Sana rubs her nose into it, clutches both the older girl and the bottle closer and tries to cease brainless thoughts. Sensing a heaviness growing on her arm, Jennie whispers something witty into the metal-plated mic that Sana can’t register, and rests her head on Sana’s, knowing all too well how much the girl craves affection when drunk.

  
  


The room is dark with flashy lights projected by a spinning globe, cold with interspersed low-pitched singing from mostly Mina and sometimes Nayeon (not the other way around now), so Sana gapes at Jennie’s multicolored face with her tongue glued to the edge of her upper lip. And wishes, before images of Jennie’s boyfriend prevent her from doing so, that she could make out with her, exactly as she wanted to around two years ago, when Jennie (and Nayeon) were still in the year above her and Sana had the most massive crush which lasted a grand total of one-and-a-half months.

  
  


But Jennie has a boyfriend and Jennie is straight and Jennie doesn’t like her.

  
  


_Get a grip._

  
  


Through the reflection on the black plastic framing the perimeter of the television, the younger girl can just about see Jennie grin and subsequently bite her lower lip while brushing her cheek up on Sana’s temple. Just the contact raises goose bumps on her neck, arms and thighs and she pulls herself away, cautiously placing the glass bottle down on the glass table as she does so, and picks up a half-had bottle of cider (Mina’s, probably) to nurse her feelings aside.

  
  


And good God. Nayeon’s right. She’s a mess.

  
  


“Oh-wo, woah, Sana, it’s your song.” Mina passes Sana the mic as she mumbles into her glass, her gummy smile warped by the clear carbonated liquid filling it. Sana licks the rim of the bottle before setting it down and mentally preps herself for the sing-off of the night, her free hand pressed against the wall to help her up and onto her weak ankles.

  
  


“Dedicated to Minho?” she hears Jennie purr, although her (blurred) vision takes the video starting on the flat screen as priority viewing right now. Those muddied, echo-y bars and sultry hums are blasted through the speakers, and Sana’s eyes are glued to the sight of a group of women (she’d maybe ogled at a bit too horribly before) performing in various sets, interspersed with scenes of them in more... suggestive poses.

  
  


Subtitles with that bouncing animated dot, characteristic of most karaoke videos, are held dear to Sana’s heart - they save her the embarrassment of forgetting Korean lyrics. Though if you didn’t know her now, you wouldn't believe it. You could blame it on the fact that a glasses-less, contacts-less girl with astigmatism can’t distinguish much hangul clearly, or you could blame it on her failing ability to comprehend much. Either possibility would leave you puzzled as to why her gaze is instead locked on the lips of the two women on the screen painted in a lush palette, their mouths begging to meet.

  
  


Usually, she’d be busting out her moves to the song she’d casually memorized the choreography for, yet now she’s stood with a limp hand by her side, the mic threatening to slip out of her grip. Something hard and unknown grows in her throat, and Sana tries to gulp it down but she’s unable to; her throat’s drier than the Sahara. Sana watches with curious eyes as the scenes blink past, eyes which would beg the question (had Sana regained her common sense): “Why don’t you look at Minho’s like this?”

  
  


_Why do you want to make out with other people so much?_

  
  


Minho is leather and Minho is funny, and everyone loves Minho and Sana’s parents would entirely approve of Minho, and Minho is cute and Minho is a sweetheart who’d give you his world, and-

  
  


“Sana, your mom,” a gentle voice calls from behind Sana, who stumbles just enough to send her crashing into the couch with just enough tact to take her phone from Mina’s hand. Holding the faux leather upholstery of the couch under her arm, the kneeling schoolgirl shushes the other three impatiently before swiping at the screen and bringing it up to her ear.

  
  


Praying to whatever God may be out there that she’d have mastered her sober acting technique by now, she clears her throat and answers with a bright “Hey Mom!”. Greeted with a unbelieving “Sana, sweetie, you’re going to be back from dance practice soon, _right_?”, Sana fakes a smile in the vain hope that it’ll do wonders for her performance, and replies with a “Of course, but I’ll still be stuck in here for fifteen minutes, have to clear some stuff up, Mom,” wishing that it’ll buy her some time.

  
  


After back-and-forth dialogue about the possibility of “predators and other awful people” around town “this time of the night”, Sana ends the call with a too-cheerful “Bye Mom!”, a promise to be home "by midnight, max" and a careless plonk of her phone against the seat of the couch. Sana shuts her eyes for the briefest moment before proceeding towards the far corner of the room, picking her bag from the messy pile and turning to the table to get a quick final swig of the cider.

  
  


The warmth of alcohol begins at the throat and travels through her chest and down into her stomach and it stays and it remains there until the next gulp hits. She wants, craves, daydreams of a warmth which starts and surges and spreads and never dies. Sana asks why she’s been craving warmth, why comfort and safety have become the last things she thinks about before going to sleep at night. And takes another sip, and reasons, that if she finds a warmth which starts and surges and spreads forever, far more than another swig of cider will, that obsession would be self-explanatory.

  
  


Warmth is an idea she toys with, plays with in her mind a little more than she should. So familiar with the thought of warmth that she forms opinions and comparisons at the snap of her fingers. Of Momo no doubt, because _of course she does_. _Of course_ her winding thoughts'll lead her to the helpline volunteer (who she'd been faithfully ignoring the messages of for a week or two). 

  
  


Momo’s touch is like cider - the warmth of it starts then stops too soon for her liking. But Minho is like vodka - it stays, it stays and it stays. And maybe a permanent kind of warmth is above all others. 

  
  


The cider begins, travels, stays and leaves, just as she does right now, making her way to the door of the windowless room.

  
  


“Come, I’ll drive you hoooome,” Nayeon croaks, her throat ruined by one too many shots. Sana takes one last look at the flushed senior, her eyes noticeably bloodshot even in the near-dark. And she shakes her head to the offer, adding a little chuckle at the ridiculousness of it.

  
  


“You’ll get both of us killed unnie,” she clarifies, and ends of with a weaker “B-bye guys” as she exits the oxymoronic bright darkness of the room and into a static, clinical white of the karaoke place. It’s one with a hallway so narrow she feels the claustrophobia settle on her, and subsequently push her towards the main door of the shop, right by a drowsy manager at the counter with eyes fixed to whatever mobile game he may be playing.

  
  


Sana stumbles out of the place with only a slight furrow of the brow from the manager, and is greeted with the blinding lightness of the topmost floor of the dead-ish mall she’s been in for hours. Trying to get to the elevator, she trudges forward in (what she assumes to be) a straight line, only to end up at one end of a bench nearby with a sudden throbbing headache.

  
  


The quiet of the open space should scare her - the six benches awkwardly positioned about the expanse, a few fake plants to keep them company give off an unsettling aura. But it throbs insanely against her skull; a tightness forming around her head so strong it forces her down on one of the uncomfortable seats. And finally, her upper torso collapses onto her lap, but not before she pulls her phone out.

  
  


Indistinct shapes appear on the screen with the click of a button. Saved by the wonders of touch-memory yet again, Sana manages to get into her contacts, scrolling past a list of names of people she knows and doesn’t know, of people she loves and love her and of people who don’t. And she could call any one of them, any one of those who love her, who’d be genuinely concerned about her if they could only see her in the state she’s in right now, but _oh_ :

  
  


Jeongyeon’s with… whoever (she hadn’t gotten around to finding out who the mystery boy is, _yet_ ). Chaeyoung’s too, _too_ young for this mess. Youngjae’s always finishing up on soon-to-be-due homework at this hour. Soyeon and Soojin never answer her calls after ten. Minho can’t see her like this, can never see her like this.

  
  


Her other hand randomly switching between twirling the baby hairs at the back of her neck and smacking her head, she rushedly taps a few buttons and brings her phone up to her ear. It rings, and rings, and rings, and though it’s that same monotonous, boring ring like any other, the realization that she hasn’t called this number in what feels like ages settles down on her and crashes and blankets her with a disturbing, malformed fear. “A-” she sputters out, before being interrupted with a groggy:

  
  


“ _S-chan?_ ”

  
  


Deciding to perhaps get into a more comfortable position, Sana lifts her head and flops over the armrest, her hair still obscuring most of her vision, her lips now upturning into a smile. Because, _of course. Of course_ she would smile. 

  
  


“ _S-chan…?_ ”

  
  


She’d lie if she said she didn’t keep her mouth shut just to hear her say that again. Because good god she misses it, good god does it feel like a step back into the metaphorical box which she loves, and which she keeps in the back of her mind, and which she had tried to powerlessly turn a deaf ear to for god knows what reason, for god knows how long, because _good god...that voice_.

 

“ _Mo...mo… I…_ ” Dragging out the last letter in a vocal fry, Sana attempts to form an understandable, appropriate sentence in her mind to justify her calling a helpline volunteer close to midnight. Smacking her lips together though, the words she could use in forming a excuse are lost in the flux of her veins, lost at the impossibility of such a task: there isn’t really _any_ good reason as to why she’s calling Momo. She's not calling because she drank away " _her issues regarding her sexuality_ ", not calling in desperation for " _any further emotional support on LGBTQ+ issue_ s". 

 

She stutters: “ _I...Uh…_ ”

  
  


Momo lets out a sound, somewhere between a whimper and an “ _oh_ ”, before continuing with a: “ _Are you… drunk_?” Her head reeling with the last of the warmth of cider exiting her system, Sana arches her back for a moment in yearning for a mattress that could relieve her of this savage wakefulness. Met with stupefied silence on Sana’s end, Momo presses on, asking: “ _Why did you call?_ ”

 

“ _Momo…_ ” she starts, again, like the beginning of a chant or incantation.

 

Rather disjointed in thought, the schoolgirl is also reminded of her choice of cider that night - peach and mint, indicative of the vulnerability of her latent mind to _certain_ influences. The nectar mixed in the alcohol, ever so faintly tickling the tip of her tongue as a memory, brings her back to the peach soda she'd had on a night spent fantasizing about Momo and her looks and her story. 

 

What has she even found out by now?

 

Nothing of friends, nothing of family, nothing of the surroundings that made Momo _Momo_. Nothing but talk of volunteering and side occupations and of untouchable Sundays. Nothing but the creeping knowledge of knowing how a simple “ _Yes?_ ” feels travelling through the wires and through space and through yet more wires and through the speaker of her phone until, at last, it reaches her ear, differs in comparison to one that travels only through air, only through a lack of space. 

  
  


And “ _Momo…_ ” she mutters, though doesn't know if it's for the cider or for the volunteer. 

  
  


“ _Yes, I’m here, S-chan."_

 

She's always here. 

  
  


“ _I needa go back home, Momo…_ ”

  
  
  


♡

  
  
  
  


Bus lights are never bright enough for Sana’s liking, especially when it’s late at night and especially on a rather old vehicle such as the one they’re in right now. She feels every bump, every imperfection on the asphalt, feels the hum of the engine through the soles of her shoes and through the small of her back against maroon and olive padded seats.

  
  


Thumping, too.

  
  


Sana realizes in this very instant, with a barely functioning consciousness, that she’s slumped over on Momo a tad, the side of her head resting on her chest. The unwavering beating of Momo’s heart sends pulses of slow and low thumps against her temple and Sana senses tingles tiptoe across her downy cheek.

  
  


And oh, it’s raining.

  
  


She can hear the pitter patter of a million droplets outside merge to form a static melody of tumult and release, though it fades into the background as soon as she tunes herself into the softest lub-dub, lub-dub… _lub-dub_ , _lub-dub_. Sana reasons in her less-than-sober state that, perhaps, drunk her is more prone to silly thoughts than she’d originally assumed.

  
  


It’s just that Sana reckons it’s so utterly lovely, the beating of Momo’s heart. Lovely how listening to it and feeling its tempo is as lulling as a song she’d fall asleep to sometimes, a song about lovers who’d meet again on a night like this, a night as beautiful as this.

  
  


Who knew that two glasses of vodka and juice would hit this strong?  

  
  


Regardless, the sound of Momo breathing adds soul to the lullaby, what with her tiny and relaxed puffs of air, and it beckons Sana to fall back into a deeper sleep. But the bus hits another speed bump and the brunette feels something rustle behind her back (most likely Momo’s hand, although when did _that_ get _there_?), only to make its way around to hold her hip back into the seat.

  
  


_Yes, it’s Momo_ , she reminds herself, though she doesn’t know why she would. Luckily, what’s left of the alcohol in her blood is keeping her from examining the implications of this. The implications of being brought home by a helpline volunteer she barely knows, but knows, but doesn’t, but who knows her, and knows her _so_ well. So she keeps her ear pressed against the volunteer’s chest even as her neck aches and begs to shift into a better position.

  
  


If, by chance, you were one of the three others on the bus to the western suburbs of Seoul, you’d be able to just about notice, when the interior of it is momentarily illuminated by the light of a lamppost, two girls around the same age seated at the back of the bus. One of whom is seemingly sleeping with a sliver of a smile upon her lips. The other being slept on has one hand placed at the sleeping girl’s hip, the other resting on the ledge along the bus window. You could catch this girl occasionally sneaking glances at (what you’d probably presume is) her friend with a kind of look beyond description.

  
  


And maybe you’d wonder if they’re friends in the first place.

  
  


Then, you’d see the sleeping girl’s head abruptly shoot up, and she shakes it a few times before positioning it on the other’s shoulder. You’d also finally be able to make out the overwhelming redness, a hallmark of relative inebriation, staining the schoolgirl’s entire face.

  
  


Unable to bear not seeing the volunteers face for another second, Sana cranes her neck up, lets her eyelids flutter open to catch a little glimpse of Momo. God, she wishes she’d worn her contacts today, or at least had the opportunity to get her glasses on without the other girl knowing. Momo’s a blur, everything is a blur, amplified by her ever-increasing need for sleep.

  
  


But, well, she’s a _pretty_ blur.

  
  


Little twinkles of greens, ambers, whites and blues dance in the umber of Momo’s eyes. _Like those mini multi-colored marshmallows floating around in a nice, warm cup of hot chocolate_ , she thinks, ideas of sleep miraculously fading to the back of her mind. To this silly thought she giggles even more, enough to cause her entire form to shake along with it, enough to draw Momo’s attention to her.

  
  


The volunteer leans her head back, as if to take advantage of the little space that can be afforded between two people on cramped bus seats. As the bus drives past another lamppost, the schoolgirl spots dark circles under Momo’s eyes. Letting the giggles die, Sana looks into the other girl’s hot chocolate-like eyes, repositioning her cheek on her shoulder higher this time, slightly obscuring her vision in her right eye.

  
  


Then, that light giggle.

  
  


“ _Go back to sleep, S-chan_ ,” Momo whispers, breaking their eye contact with a glance down to check something on her phone. She lays her phone back down on her lap and disappointingly turns to regard the outside world once more, and again Sana notes how the rainbow-tinted marshmallows of the lights swamp back into the hot chocolate of her eyes. Momo does clarify though, later, the softness radiating through each word she enunciates, saying: “ _I’ll wake you up when we’re there.”_

  
  


If there’s one thing alcohol does to Sana, one thing Nayeon, Jennie, Mina, Jeongyeon, or any other girl she’d gone out drinking with would tut to, it’s her inclination to grab onto anything, any person who’d let her reheat the chill of her extremities with their body, to bury her face into any soft, welcoming surface she so takes a liking to.

  
  


Tonight, it’s Momo’s arm. Specifically, it’s her varsity jacket-clothed arm - its cotton sleeve fleecy with age.

  
  


“ _Pretty_.” For her voice and her eyes and her care.

  
  


“ _Pretty_.” For the little mole on Momo’s pale, bare nose that dared to escape Sana’s gaze.

  
  


“ _Pretty_.” For the warmth that starts and spreads and spreads and blooms and envelops.

  
  


“ _I wanna kiss a pretty girl. I've never… I wa…_ ”

  
  
  
  


♡

  
  
  


You’d have never guessed that the girl in a far too large ebony and forest green jacket, lumbering down the streets of this suburbia past midnight, had been piggybacking the sleepy schoolgirl for over ten minutes.

  
  


With only a trace of lethargy growing on Momo’s face as she makes another step towards the start of a street, a large crack in the pavement nearly taking both of them down to the slick asphalt of the quiet road, she pulls up her phone once more, zooming into the map of the area with pursed lips. After double-checking the typed-in location (which Sana very, very vaguely remembers mashing in), the girl slips the phone back into her jean pocket. The moderately awake girl whines at the feeling of Sana slipping off of her grip, and whispers a “ _sorry_ ” before bouncing her up into a more secure position.

  
  


Now slightly more conscious after the startling movement, Sana nuzzles up to Momo, settling her nose on the soft locks of her hair.

  
  


She smells of coconuts, like the ones she’d had in Phuket years ago on a family trip, and of some brand of fabric softener that she doesn’t use. And of... baby powder? The exact kind she used back when they could just get it in any regular convenience store in Osaka. 

  
  


“ _Mmm_ ,” she mumbles into Momo’s hair, and she can feel the other girl shudder under her breath. Sana giggles, her upturned lips pressed against the crown of the volunteer’s head, carelessly, shamelessly.

  
  


Shame is reserved for tomorrows, for the hours that follow sickening hangovers, never for todays, never for the hours before congruent thought. So Sana decides that she wants to go on a spiel about topics and hopes and dreams that an unwavering helpline volunteer would not really give a fuck about. Momo wants solutions to important issues like her lack of comfort and Dahyun and her parents’ expectations, and Sana’s going to give her the exact opposite of that.

  
  


“ _Momo,_ ” she says, because she misses the sound of it.

  
  


“ _Don’t worry, S-chan, only a few more minutes and you’ll be home._ ”

  
  


A corner of Sana’s lips is pulled up, not at the prospect of reaching her comfy bed (not entirely) - more at the idea of Momo thinking she doesn’t want her company for at least a few more hours. “ _One day, I wanna go see an aurora_ ,” she states, knowing that her words are mostly for the air and knowing that Momo’ll give her a cursory remark.

  
  


But, “ _Why_?” Momo asks, and Sana thanks her internally for not ignoring such a silly comment completely.

  
  


“ _Because I like, love… the sky_.” As she allows that last word to be heard, Sana glances up at the night, and imagines the sparkles at places where stars could’ve been. “ _I used to cloudwatch with my grandma when I was really young_ ,” she continues with a yawn. “ _She told me how it looked more beautiful than any other sky when she saw it with grandpa, and I want to see it too. With someone I love_ ,” she adds, placing emphasis on the _‘I’_.

  
  


“ _I miss her_ ,” Sana admits, acknowledging this time, with certainty granted by Momo’s unending silence, how her sentiments are lost in chill of the evening wind.

  
  


Sana sees flashes of indigos and cyans and emeralds in the sky and hot chocolate and marshmallows and umber when she lets her eyelids fall. Scratches of sneakers growing louder on the pavement signal the end of their (ninety percent Momo’s) journey, and Sana opens her eyes to the sight of her front gate coming into view.

  
  


“ _Is this it?_ ” Momo questions.

  
  


“ _It’s it_ ,” Sana replies, grinning at her statement as if it’s a clever joke. Momo bends down, letting Sana hop off right in front of her house, the threat of a migraine inching closer as soon as she does so. She rests her forehead against Momo’s chest again, her arms fit snug around her cotton-padded waist, despite the fact that the volunteer is shorter than her, despite the fact that there’s a persisting ache in her neck from the bus ride here.

  
  


_Lub-dub, lub-dub_.

 

_Lub-dub, lub-dub._

  
  


_“Bye, S-chan_ ,” Momo bids and pats Sana on her back one final time. And in a tone Sana knows she’ll miss for the rest of the night, the volunteer reminds her: “ _Drink a lot of water, okay? Let me know if you’re alright tomorrow_.” The brunette nods into the fabric of her jacket and, with a pained unwillingness and with her stare fixed on the out-of-focus texture of forest green fibers darkened by her own shadow, inhales, pauses, and exhales. 

 

" _Bye Momo_ ," the schoolgirl mumbles, a side of her lips still pressed into the cotton. Expectedly, unfortunately, the other pulls from Sana's embrace. Momo gestures towards the house with the windows from which no light shine from, one in front of a soaringly large camphor tree, the greens of its topmost leaves shaded into an indigo by the midnight's depth. Smiles, the creases of her exhaustion would be visible if not for the dark. Letting her hands fall with weight into her front two pockets, Momo turns on her heels and begins her own journey home. She goes silently, taking (almost selfishly) the warmth with her. 

 

Not on Sana's watch. 

 

" _Bye Momo!_ " 

 

The dim figure of a girl stood two houses away immediately stops diminishing, but she does not turn, or at least, Sana does not think she turns. 

 

" _Bye-bye, S-chan,_ " Sana can barely hear, before the form strays into the horizon once more, before making her way past the gate, and into her house. Remembering its quality and replaying it keeps the insufferable loneliness of stepping foot into a living room washed in a melancholy blue at bay.   
  


 

The designated princess of the house is nearly spooked by another figure upon entering the kitchen for a drink (and maybe some yogurt).

 

“You’re lucky it’s a Friday; your mom would be storming if it was a school night," his deep voice echoes through the lifelessness of the first floor. 

  
  


“ _Sorry, Dad_ ," she apologizes in Japanese, as if it's the most logical thing to do. 

  
  


“You know you can tell me anything, right? Sana?” 

 

After memorizing every inch of kitchen floor, every drawer and placement of each utensil, Sana tactfully fills a cup of water for herself and turns to leave the agonizing space before her father starts on something she'd rather delay for a few more decades.

 

Screw the yogurt, yogurt can wait.

 

In the midnight tint, the schoolgirl, still in her uniform, still with her Hello Kitty backpack, shuts her eyes at the sight of the spark of a lighter, and the ember-like glow at the butt of a cigarette and the putrid gray of smoke. “ _Goodnight, Dad_ ," Sana whispers. To be met without a nod, nor a smile, nor an expression she can recognize behind the light of that lit tobacco.

 

 

♡

  
  
  


She dreamt of Momo that night. And she barely has _real_ dreams nowadays.

  
  


It’s always bite-sized chunks, random pieces of a whole puzzle she could never get the full picture of. But not this night.  

  
  


There wasn’t much detail in their surroundings - all she knows is that they were stood by the Dotonburi with the life and the dazzle of gigantic flashing digital billboards reflected in their irises, the darkness of the night not standing a chance in the brightness of the vibrant nightlife capital of Japan.

  
  


It felt nostalgic even though she’d never had a dream like this before. Nostalgic like time wasted with her old friends photobombing tourists’ pictures in the evening.

  
  


What she can recall with clarity is that their shoulders were flush against each other’s as they leaned on the metal rails of the canal, their temples pressed against one another’s. Neither saying a single word, not even a cough or a sniffle though their lips bore faint but fixed smiles.

  
  


Warm smiles.

  
  


She remembers somewhat clearly, somewhat definitively that both of them, clad in matching puffy coats with the faux fur-lined hood, held hot chocolate (from McDonald’s, no less) between shivering hands. And most clearly, most definitively, that Momo had done something wonderful before that moment.

  
  


Sana doesn’t know what Momo had done before that point, can only pinpoint that the her in her dream had thought that it was “ _wonderful_ ”, and “ _could she please do it more often?_ ”.

  
  


It had ended with her abruptly opening her eyes to the blackness of her ceiling and the apprehensive placement of her hand over her chest.

  
  


She marveled at the tenderness and warmth resonating from within - incomparable to what she’d felt in her dream, but noticeable no doubt.

  
  


Breathed out a sigh as she gingerly picked up her phone from her nightstand and took to the internet, instinctively searching up terms like “romantic dream meaning” or “friend dream meaning” or “dream romantic friend date meaning”.

  
  


_Are we friends?_

  
  


_What are we?_

  
  


_Is dream theory really pseudoscientific bullshit?_

  
  


_How didn’t I get a hangover?_

  
  


Concluding, as she steps into those same glass doors she’d been through a week ago, that it’s most likely the rough gallon of water she’d downed throughout the night that miraculously saved her from any ill-effects, she clutches tighter onto the bag of freshly-baked cookies she’d gotten for the girl from her dream.

  
  


It’s more of a peace offering for bothering her and wasting hours of what-could’ve-been precious sleep on chaperoning a drunk girl home.

  
  


Returning the receptionist’s welcoming “Hello”, she makes her way past the same noticeboard with the clippings, past the same flight of stairs (now assured enough to not require the aid of the wooden railing), past the same ivory walls laced with the same aroma of lemongrass that attacked her olfactory glands. Repeats the same “hello” she’d said to Soohyun to the light brunette-haired girl sat at the small library as she looked familiar to her, and it’s only courtesy.

  
  


Walking mindlessly to one wall on the opposite end of the hallway, as if beguilled by the one humble poster stuck to it, she squints as she approaches the paper with the hangul in sparkly purple lettering she feels she'll come to associate with this center. It's in a more awkward font, bubbly, harder for her to quickly scan but it mentions something of same-sex marriage in Taiwan. Something she'd had popping up in her news feed nowadays, but which she'd swipe away with haste when her screen's faced up on the breakfast table. 

 

But Taiwan. It's hard to not think of Tzuyu whenever Taiwan is mentioned; she's the only Taiwanese friend she's ever had. It'd be a shot in the dark to assume that whatever decision a ruling party in her homeland made mirrors that of her friend's, although it's a lovely thought. A lovely thought to believe that Tzuyu'll accept her. A lovely thought that Tzuyu'll accept her being in an LGBTQ center right now, with baked goods and a little request. 

  
  


Then, Sana pauses for a moment in the disbelief of her bumbling stupidity: Momo only helps out at the centre _every other week_. And this week is _not_ that other week. And Momo is _probably_ not here. 

  
  


Then, Sana determines that if she’d spent _all that time taking the (packed and humid) subway here_ , that perhaps there’s no harm in checking every single door with _that thin thread of hope that Momo’s here, and willing to accept her cookies (and invitation)._

  
  
  


Then, Sana hears two voices: one louder, more bass, intense, sagacious, the other softer, less depth, weak, diffident. Both in Korean. Both familiar. Both behind an ajar green door with a small, square-shaped frosted glass window.

  
  


Then,

  
  


“-never see one. Not my thing.”

  
  


“... a lot… have to work… worth… I was…”

  
  


Then, a pause, and the noise of a leisurely slurp and the bang of ceramic against a counter. And a quicker slurp, and the tap of ceramic against the same counter.

  
  


“She wants to lower your dosage ri-”

  
  


“Shh!”

  
  


“Not like… this center… you… I…”

  
  


“... she… it… never… she…”

  
  


“... you… me…”

  
  


Then, silence.

  
  


And Sana scurries away from the door, though stops in her tracks to gape at the ivory of the walls because _where does she have to hide_ , and _where can she actually go_ , and _who does that voice belong to?_ Unlike in a movie, where she, as a character, would have the chance to actually think this through, she's stopped by a touch. Like a cruel answer to her questions and internal monologue, a tap on her shoulder prompts her to spin around and find two girls standing in the middle of the hallway with their Barbie and ostrich mugs held in their hands. 

 

" _S-chan? What are you doing here?_ " Momo tilts her head to the side, questions in a language Sana knows the other girl can't understand. 

 

And Nayeon looks Sana up and down with knowing eyes, a triumphant smirk sneaking up her bare lips, the scratched image of Barbie framed between her fingers. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for compulsory het romance but anyway it's sana day (soon)! woot!
> 
> p.s. the cub is good at tarot ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


	6. Five; Five plus seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who else does Momo know? 
> 
> “I don’t want to be your friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #nosamosadness2k19

She follows the Korean girl in front of her down the streets, winding past the multitude of buildings in the city so ridiculously absentmindedly that she nearly loses her balance a couple dozen times, each near trip-and-fall earning an amused snort from Nayeon.

  
 

People watching has been occupying the majority of her consciousness. The masses of young people (mostly women) ebbing and flowing through the sidewalks laugh and smile and hold shopping bags and phones, wasting their midday hours weaving around clothes shops and knick-knack stores.

  
 

Sana’d be envious, having not gone shopping with Soyeon, Hwang Eunbi _or_ Jung Eunbi in weeks, if it weren’t for one unsettling thought building in her head. How, in the realm of possibilities that exist in this universe, of the different lives and strangers whom she crosses paths with on a daily basis, _how_ did _Im Nayeon_ , of all nine million people in Seoul, get close to _her_ Momo? Is this city that small?

  
 

Nayeon walks up a short flight of sun-faded stairs, which Sana once again barely makes up thanks to her tunnel vision, and hits the button on the glass doors, watching as they open for them to enter the Lotteria. With Nayeon turning around to face her, Sana catches the self-satisfied smile on Nayeon’s face as she asks: “You want anything, babes? It’s on me.”

  
 

Strong winds that tousled her let-down hair have now been replaced by the staleness of the inside of a fast-food restaurant - the smell of an overused grill and cleaning chemicals especially apparent when she takes a deep breath.

  
 

“I…”, Sana lets drift with no continuation, her vocal cords conjuring up a slew of incomprehensible little sounds as she holds her gaze with the impatient girl before her. Letting arms she didn’t know she’d raised fall to her sides and breathing an exhale of air out through now-pursed lips, Sana cranes her head to look at the menu.

  
 

Before she can even scan through the tantalizing images of burgers and chicken and sides, Nayeon rests a hand on Sana’s shoulder and gives it a few pats. “Cheese sticks it is then, think you need ‘em,” she settles, and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear as she makes her way to the counter. Sana spares her friend a few glances, regarding the Nayeon who’s waiting in line to order with her eyes glued to the screen of her phone, before taking a seat and planting her face in the palms of her hands.

  
 

She squeezes her eyelids shut and takes in the chatter of her surroundings; their conversations about their school work and idols and part-time jobs and trivial things that don’t really matter in the whole scheme of things. Then shuts them out. Slowly opens her eyes and looks through the spaces between her fingers, past the blur of too-close fingers, to the grain of the table and wonders how she’s ended up in a situation like this, on a day like this.

  
 

If only she were hungover. This wouldn’t have happened.

  
 

The compartmentalization of what happened with Momo and Nayeon at the center fails on Sana, and suddenly she’s faced with the suffocating realizations of far too many things at once.

  
 

It’s surreal. So insanely surreal. And frightening. So insanely frightening.

  
 

Sana takes a stand menu off of the table because she must have something to grab onto, to hold onto, to be occupying the emptiness in her hands. There’s a single word that Momo would have suggested by now, an instruction that she could and should use but it escapes Sana’s mind and a shattering wave of panic crashes into her, launching her heart into overdrive.

 

 

What had happened to the bursting box marked in bold with Momo’s name? Kept safe in her labyrinth-like mind she’d made an oath to herself she’d never let anyone tread into? Not Jeongyeon, nor Mina, nor Chaeyoung, not Nayeon?

  
 

Momo, her cotton, her velvet, her warmth, her simplicity, all so untarnished by the discord and unsightliness of the outside world.

  
 

Ripped apart by one little smirk.

  
 

She doesn’t blame Nayeon, of course. Or at least, that’s what she wishes to believe.

  
 

But she questions herself deep down if it would be self-centered of her to think of Nayeon as the Theseus to her (way less barbaric… more protective) Minotaur ( _yes_ , she _has_ been listening to some of Minho’s mythological ramblings), the one to liberate the things she would much rather hold on to.

  
 

There’s a hitch in her breath as she shakes her head to the thought. “ _That’s a really, really, really horrible analogy,_ ” Sana reminds herself in a barely audible whine. Because Momo is safety, Momo is security and Momo is an ephemeral enigma who appears and disappears in realities and dreams. And Sana believes that the helpline volunteer, everything about her, is incomparable to any other impression she knows of.

  
 

That, and, well, Nayeon isn’t _exactly_ her enemy.

  
 

Nonetheless, Sana guesses it’ll disturb her forever to not know why she views Momo this way. Views her like the lines from dialogue in a movie she’s misplaced in her memory; so unreachable, so faded, so aged, yet so affecting, so clear, so _present_.  

  
 

It also disturbs her to delve deeper into the improbability of the only Japanese-speaking LGBTQ helpline volunteer in Seoul having a personal connection with a classmate of hers. With Nayeon, of all people.

  
 

Seoul is small. Far too small. _Who else does Momo know_?

  
 

She’s shivering now, teeth chattering, even as she’s wrapped under two layers of clothes, even as she’s feeling the intense heat coming from the uneasiness trapped in her chest. It’s cold and the stand menu her trembling hands are on the verge on snapping in two is cold and her feet impatiently tap against the tiles of the floor as if to say _it’s cold_ and that maybe _she should bolt_.

  
 

The Japanese schoolgirl digs the heels of her shoes into the matte tiles, and they make a forgettable noise.

  
 

Her sight lands on her Theseus, who nonchalantly slips her phone into her purse to direct her attention to the woman hollering at her with their tray full of items at the counter. Sana doesn’t like the way she pulls her lips inwards less-than-personably at the reappearance of Nayeon in her field of vision. She doesn’t, truly, but this secret was hers to keep, hers to hold onto for however long she wanted - no - _needed_ to.

  
 

What’s even more distressing, however, is the way Nayeon heaves an unassertive, shaky sigh as she sets the tray down in the middle of the table, snatches and shoves a fry in her mouth, and plops down into the seat opposite hers. Avoiding eye contact for a few beats in time, her friend places her palms flush against the tabletop before proceeding to tap at its surface with her fingernails.

  
 

Not of notice to Sana is how the tips of the middle and index nails on her left hand have had their mauve polish chipped off. If Sana were as intensely perceptive, observant as the other girl, perhaps she would have wondered if Nayeon had been hard at deliberating over the entire situation too.

  
 

“I didn’t, like, get straws,” Nayeon admits, taking another fry in between two fingers and playing with the limp chip this time. Finally, she looks into Sana’s fluttering eyes and clears her throat at her quiet composure - the intense soundlessness of Sana is chilling, is unnerving. “Save the environment, that kinda shit, you know?” the girl adds, half in truth, half in hopes of a reaction from the voiceless schoolgirl.

  
 

Sana doesn’t blink, doesn’t say a word.

  
 

“This probably isn’t how you’d imagined coming out, is it, babe?” Nayeon tosses the fry back onto the tray, wipes her fingers on a napkin and rests her hand lightly on the back of Sana’s. The latter flinches at the touch but quickly welcomes it with the release of the stand menu, and even a hesitant smile at the way Nayeon rubs ‘o’s to warm her ice-cold skin. Sana shakes her head, unable to speak with how confused she is.

  
 

Nayeon looks to the ceiling, maybe, to search for answers, then directs her gaze to Sana’s eyes. She begins with another sigh, then: “I’m not, like, good at, like, super serious talk with, like, anybody or even my close friends!” Sana notes the nervousness obvious in Nayeon’s speech, feels the ‘o’s over her skin increase in size and with pace.

  
 

“But I mean like,” she continues, now making large, wild gestures with her other hand. “You- I knew that you were, like, gay ever since you fucking told me how you had the hots for like half of Red Velvet yet didn’t, like, fangirl over any male idol _at all_.”

  
 

_Has she been that obvious?_

 

 

With a slight rise of one of Sana’s eyebrows, Nayeon takes the cue (no matter how wrong she may be) and revises her statement, adding: “Okay, maybe one or two but you get the point.” The older of the two reaches into a mustard yellow packet and offers a cheese stick to Sana with a shrug and a softer gaze. “And maybe it felt, like, nice? You know? To _know_ know that you’re not the only lesbian in school. Okay, well maybe I know about a few but they’re bitches. So, just… just to have _you_ , like, confirm it by being at the center and, like, Momo and everything. It’s… It’s _everything_.”

  
 

Hesitantly, the Japanese girl accepts the cheese stick with the tiniest “Thank you”, biting down on it, pulling at it to watch a string of mozzarella materialize and stretch and thin. Nayeon sighs again (Sana’s lost count) and removes her hand from Sana’s, choosing instead to run fingers down her scalp, comb through her hair, distracting her nerves.

  
 

The saltiness, umami of the cheese, herbs and spices settles on her tongue as she swallows the cheese stick, and Sana inwardly thanks Nayeon. Thanks Nayeon for remembering how she’d said she missed having them from over a week ago, thanks Nayeon for treating her with a tenderness she hardly sees in her, thanks Nayeon for the empathy. Empathy, not sympathy. Empathy, not-

  
 

 _Momo_.

  
 

In spite of the significance of it all, the significance of her first ever coming out to someone she knows in real life, one who she can see and can hold, her thoughts trail back to Momo. How foreseeable that this be the case; that even as the clouds in her mind coalesce and even as the faint appearance of an impending doom threatens to surface, that all thoughts lead back to Momo.

 

Never fails; always does.

  
 

_Why didn’t you tell me about Momo?_

  
 

“Look, it may not look like it but my heart is fucking beating at the fucking rate of a thousand beats per minute, okay?”

  
 

_How did you meet Momo?_

  
 

“‘Cause you’re sad and I can’t fucking handle a sad Sana!”

  
 

_Were you one of her callers too?_

  
 

“I’ve never even seen a sad Sana ’til fu-ah- _now_!”

  
 

_Are you dating Momo?_

  
 

“Satang…”

  
 

_Are you dating Momo?_

  
 

“Satang!”

  
 

“M… I… I’m no- I’m not a lesbian… I’m bi, not gay,” Sana spits out as a diversion, relatively, somewhat sure of the label she hasn’t really thought about since she was fifteen. Nayeon drops a half-eaten fry. She gives her friend her classic look of incredulity, signing an “x” with two crossed fingers. “What do you mean,” Sana says, making the same gesture as if it’d help with her understanding of whatever it may mean.

  
 

“Sana… I don’t think you’re bi.” Sana’s eyelids flicker. “Trust me, I know tonnes of bi people and like, they’re… something else. You’re not _that_.”

 

_Momo wouldn't say that._

  
 

As sweet as the girl is for the empathy, for the comfort, for the cheese sticks, Sana doesn’t necessarily appreciate the way Nayeon enunciates her last word. Doesn’t like what it suggests. Doesn’t like how it misplaces years of second-guessing, sleep deprivation and Google searches. Doesn’t like how it erases the instances (no matter how few they may be) where she did feel _something_ , maybe. Something. And something _isn’t_ nothing.

  
 

_Or is it?_

  
 

Tossing the last halved cheese stick in her mouth, Sana shakes her head once, to forget, then shakes it faster, harder, in forced conviction. “I… I _know_ what I-”

  
 

“Babe, were you even attracted to those assholes?”

  
 

_Yes, yes, maybe, yes._

 

  
“-Nay, can we talk about...“ She grabs a napkin with closed eyes, pressing the material against her mouth, muffling her next words: “I don’t know, I just… I like girls _and_ guys and… I wanna, like, move on from that, kay? It’s… done.”

  
 

Sana opens her eyes to a resigned Nayeon finishing the last of her fries with a lick of her fingers. “So… are you, um, seeing anyone right now?”

  
 

Nayeon chuckles a little, balling a paper napkin in one hand as she strokes her arm with her other. “Pff! No, I wish...” Her hand settles on her arm and she breaks their eye contact to shift her gaze to the floor, the slightest pinkish hue coloring the tiniest bits of her cheeks. She chuckles, again. “See, I do, like, _like_ someone right now, but, Sana, babes, if I told you who I’m crushing on, you just might wanna fucking, like, kill me or something so I’m not taking chances.”

  
 

Mentally flipping through a list of girls they both know, Sana deliberates the possibility of Nayeon liking Momo to her liking someone else, and determines, eventually, ultimately, after a good few seconds, that perhaps _it can’t be_. Can’t be Momo. Because she wouldn’t kill Nayeon for liking Momo, right? Wouldn’t kill her for having a crush on Momo, who is considerably closer to, considerably fonder of Nayeon than Sana has ever been.

 

No, she _wouldn’t_.

  
 

But who else could it be? Jennie? Chaeyoung? Soyeon? Jeongyeon?

  
  
 

“Anyways,” the girl sat opposite her says, shaking Sana out of her reverie with the sound of a soft slam of the balled up napkin against the tray. With cleared, less-than-flushed-looking cheeks and a curiosity entwined in her expression, Nayeon leans closer to Sana, asking: “Who is Momo to you, other than, like, a helpline volunteer?”

 

 

The schoolgirl looks to Nayeon with almost pleading eyes as she spurts out a “Who am I to Momo?”. Sana shakes her head with the most minute of movements - so minute one wouldn’t even be able to notice it from more than a foot away - as if to forgo any less-than-optimistic thoughts, as if it may clear the silly thoughts materializing in her head. “Wh...what does she say about me?”

  
 

“She…” Nayeon starts, looking the ground again, this time without the shyness of before, without the blushing cheeks. “She doesn’t really, like, mention you-”

  
 

“I’m S-chan,” Sana states, a dash of half-wrecked optimism apparent in her tone.

  
 

Nayeon flips stray locks of hair to the side, twirling strands of them around her index as she bites on her bottom lip. “Yeah, no, she hasn’t mentioned an S-chan, or… yeah, like, no, um…” The hair she releases falls into a slight curl as it hits her chest, and Nayeon captures Sana’s sight with a more confrontational, although characteristically less-than-serious stare. “You haven’t answered my question, you know?”

  
 

The answer slips effortlessly from Sana's lips: “What am I _supposed_ to say?”

  
 

An incredulous laugh escapes Nayeon. “I don’t know, “Oh, Nay, she’s like a friend!”, “She’s just my helpline buddy who I _casually_ invited to dinner and a walk under the cherry blossoms, _totally_ platonically”. Usually, you have like a metric fuck ton to say about everything!” Nayeon shrugs again, sighs again, for the umpteenth time.  “And I mean that in a good way babes, like, I like really do. Appreciate it.”

 

 

The older girl nearly reverses on her words, nearly says more to take back the implications she'd voiced when she sees something click and slump in Sana, though she hesitates and chooses to stay silent. Nayeon looks out the large windows of the restaurant, lips glued to the rim of her soda-filled cup, and watches the cars and the vans and the people as they pass. 

  
 

Unbeknownst to her though, Sana  _has_ many things to say.

 

 

In fact, Sana’s got a four thousand word essay on Momo as is. But why bother to explain the circumstances that’ve led Sana to her calling the helpline with a shaky heart? Why bother to put into words the complexity and the simplicity of how she perceives Momo? Why bother to even try to encapsulate the warmth she feels from someone she barely knows when they clearly, _clearly_ , don’t think about her?

  
 

Why bother attempting to explain how much a breath of fresh air Momo and her gorgeous words were? Away from Dahyun. Away from memories in sex ed class that poked at her from five years prior. Away from what her mother had said.

  
 

Especially, specifically, away from what her mother said.

  
 

_The TV was tuned to NHK, was broadcasting a program Sana’d not necessarily classed as “wholesome Sunday Mid-morning television”._

  
 

 _She’s sure it featured “alternative lifestyles_ ”, _sure that the title alone made her heart palpitate out her chest._

  
 

_Her father was busy typing up an email on his laptop._

  
 

_Her mother was listening, although dispassionately._

  
 

_There was an anxiety gripping Sana as a lesbian couple appeared on screen._

  
 

_They hadn’t kissed, nor hugged, nor had shown any typical outward physical signs of affection._

  
 

_But the one thing they did was that they professed - with such confidence, with such a discernible tenderness, with eyes that said all that already had to be said - that they were in love, and that their love was as pure, as deserving of recognition as anyone else’s._

  
 

_Then,_

  
 

_“Their parents never raised them right… something very broken in their brains.”_

  
 

_“Of course their parents don’t want them anymore! I wouldn't!”_

  
 

_“Isn’t it better to be normal, Sana?”_

  
 

_Sana nods. She thinks she nods. She must’ve nodded; any rebuttal and her mother wouldn’t have let her rush back into her room._

  
 

_She did cry. She’s positive she cried._

  
 

So, as she looks upon Nayeon take another sip of her coke and ahh in contentment, she decides that she needn't explain it. Decides to direct the conversation in another direction, far from the intricacies and subjectiveness of feelings and connections.

 

“Unnie, how do you know Momo?”

  
 

Nayeon plays with the clasp on her purse once she sets the cup down, replying with a: “Answering my fucking question with like another fucking question, I see how it is,” with a quiver in her lip. She continues her sentence moments later, her pause short enough to not seem entirely faked, yet long enough to arouse suspicion in Sana. She continues with a: “At the center, duh.”

  
  
  
 

♡

  
  
 

There’s a fluttering of pigeons’ wings nearby as a flock takes flight into the tangerine and purple-hued sky. Sana lightly kicks a discarded piece of bread off the curb and frowns at the low-looming clouds above her that, despite their beauty in the way an orange glow lines their forms, seemingly threatens plans for later tonight.

  
 

Sana’s stood by a large faux neon sign pointing to the Italian-Korean fusion place Momo suggested they try. She studies the caricature of a chef (whether it should be considered racist or not, she’s unsure of) and subconsciously pulls a corner of her lip up at how the mustachioed man is surrounded by adorable little piglets.

  
 

The other side to her lips follow suit and she beams, looking through the restaurant’s spotless windows and noticing matching piglet statues holding clay pasta dishes and pizzas. The schoolgirl relaxes her grin which shifts into a gentle smile as she runs her finger across a menu stuck against the fake-brick wall. And wonders, a little tilt to her head, if Momo chose to come here for the food or for the decor.

  
 

And decides, heels clicking against the concrete as she turns in her place, that either way, _how endearing._ Moreover, _how silly_. How _silly_ that she finds something like this _endearing_.

  
 

In spite of how jaw-droppingly tantalizing the pictures of food were, as well as the impossible distractions of an ever-floating mind, Sana’s attention is immediately called towards the direction of squeaky sneakers pitter-pattering down the pavement.

  
 

From the distance appears an open-mouthed volunteer walk-jogging towards her, her arms held up with her hands in loose fists, her too-short ripped jeans and too-tight t-shirt from earlier now overlayed with a weirdly familiar-looking jacket.

  
 

It’s forest green and deep black, with a stylized K embroidered with sparkling midnight thread over her left breast. Sana recalls its material in a series of flashes that pass through her mind - of its twinkle and the twinkle of her eyes and the twinkle of lights beyond bus windows.

  
 

So it doesn’t strike her as odd when she feels a warmth come over her while Momo swiftly approaches with bright eyes, the latter eventually softly bumping into her, then lazily jerking her head back and laughing it off. Anyone else on the street wouldn’t have been able to see it, but Sana swears she sees the tangerines and violets reflected in Momo’s crescent-shaped eyes.

  
 

“ _Good evening, S-chan_ ,” Momo greets, calming herself with a gentle pat on her own chest. Momo raises the hand as if to give Sana a little wave, though she lets it fall to crane her head around and examine the street behind her.

  
 

Sana takes the chance to sigh. She sighs at the saccharine, sighs at effect Momo’s mere presence has on her, sighs at how one little laugh kicks all those rather negative thoughts and doubts of Momo she'd been suppressing solidly to the curb. 

  
 

“ _My friends, well… my friend Jihyo and her girlfriend kind of wanted to join us so, heh…_ ” The shorter of the two shrugs sheepishly, a sorry look slowly taking over the nuances of her expression before continuing with a: “ _The-They’ll pay for their own food though!_ ”

  
 

Ideally, she’d be happy with the added company and the prospect of getting to know Momo outside of _the_ _job_ , but Sana nips at the inside of her cheek at the thought of not being able to talk to her privately. And what _could_ she talk about in front of Momo’s friends? And wouldn’t they have to speak Korean?

  
 

The schoolgirl would think deeper into it had the other not turned around, her back facing Sana, her varsity jacket bearing the lettering “HIRAI 64” in a large, white block font.

  
 

_Hirai. Hirai Momo?_

  
 

Judging by the size and the age apparent in the jacket, Sana gathers that it’s either her dad’s or her brother’s. Though by how relatively pristine it looks, no stains, spots or moth holes, she determines it’s probably the latter’s.

  
 

_Momo has a brother, then._

  
 

Here is when it nearly, _nearly_ gets to Sana how much she’s had to deduce from the little things, to pick out from others’ words to get a clearer picture of the girl in front of her. Sana keeps this image of Momo stored safe (though she doubts it’ll ever escape her memory any time soon), and there’s an unexplainable twitch of the muscles in her arm that forces it to raise a little.

  
 

How odd it would be, to be here and to catch a girl in a daze, standing behind an oblivious friend, looking as if there isn’t anything she'd want more than to wrap her slightly raised arm around her, looking as if there can’t be anything more right than closing the gap between them.  

 

Looking as if, at this exact moment, all the neurons firing in her brain are calling for her to back-hug Momo, to hold Momo, to press a kiss to Momo's cheek. 

  
 

Then, it flashes in Sana’s mind - the thought anyone would have had - the thought that, well, maybe she feels this way because she has a crush on Momo.

  
 

Then, she lowers her arm and smacks the side of her thigh, shaking her head in disdain.

  
 

Sana'd concluded that she would be able to recognize a crush when she gets one. It would always follow the same, set pattern: they'd do something noticeably attractive and she'd miraculously find them ten times cuter three days later. She’d stalk them on social media, blush at the sight of them, become near-obsessed with them.

 

Most importantly though, it'll stagnate and fade as quickly (or even quicker) as it came.

  
 

And maybe that’s why her previous relationships didn’t last long, and why she gets over them so easily. And maybe she _should_ get that fixed.

  
 

Regardless, nothing from the “Momo” box vaguely fits the criteria, so she shrugs it off. Tosses the entire string of thoughts to the side. Either way, crush or no crush, Momo would never reciprocate her feelings - not when she sees Sana as _another caller_ , not when she barely thinks of Sana outside her _job_.

  
 

“Hurry up guys, I’m hungry!” Momo whines, her arms flailing in the air. Sana finds Momo’s Korean adorable, if not a little bit off and noticeably accented, but adorable.

  
 

Behind Momo is two girls stumbling, trailing far behind, their faces obscured by deep, stretched shadows but evidently bearing overjoyed expressions by the loudness of their laughter, by the spontaneous stomping of their feet, by their playful shoves and slaps against each other’s shoulders. And as they approach Momo and her, Sana notices how the taller of the pair holds onto the bend of the shorter girl’s arm tightly, almost as if she could lose her at any second.

  
 

Walk down any busy street in the city and you’d eventually lose count of the couples with linked arms wearing matching clothing and accessories, occasionally or non-occasionally displaying their affection towards each other. And they do make her envious at times, they do get the odd blush out of her - in fact, she’ll never forget the time she was lucky enough to catch a proposal in public, their commitment sealed with a kiss having set her in a hopelessly-romantic rut for days (okay, maybe _one)_.

  
 

Now maybe they’re masqueraded by the pretense of being “just friends” or maybe she simply doesn’t people-watch in places like Itaewon (though Itaewon is _Itaewon_ ) enough, but gay couple sightings are few and far between. Plus, it’s not like seeing them in real life would get her overwhelmed with emotions - it just instills her with a little comfort. A glow.  

  
 

And it’s just cute, the way the shorter of the two surprises her girlfriend with a quick peck on the cheek. Cute, the way the taller girl hastily retracts and feigns disgust and disinterest. Cute, the way she promptly decides to stop the act and repay the longer-haired girl with a kiss against her temple. Cute, the way they fall into a mess of giggles and yet more light pecks and hard shoves. It’s just _cute_. It’s just-

  
 

“Jeongyeon?” Sana mutters under her breath, as the shorter of the two scampers with a hastened pace and wraps one arm around Momo and the other around Sana.

 

 

Here is when Sana abandons her agnosticism and prays that Nayeon's crush isn't Jeongyeon. 

  
 

“Momo, oh my god, it’s S-chan!” the girl she assumes is Jihyo exclaims, as if she’d been dying to meet her. It startles Sana, startles her even more as the girl scans her up and down, finishing it with a “You _are_ so pretty!”

  
 

Jeongyeon inches her way closer to her girlfriend’s side with an awkward smile gracing her face painted in complete and utter disbelief. With just a _slight_ hint of horror. Just as she rests her chin on the shorter one’s shoulder, she looks into Sana’s eyes and finds, strangely, bewilderment mixed with a yielding acceptance of the situation. “I’m Jihyo, by the way, and this-” Jihyo squeezes Jeongyeon’s cheeks between her fingers and thumb. “-is my beautiful girlfriend, Jeongyeon.”

  


Sana smiles and nods in that exaggerated manner Jeongyeon knows so well - an offshoot of the kind of polite, baffled smile-and-nod she gave to the four or so boys who'd confessed to her that Valentine's with the same pink teddy bears and heart-shaped chocolate boxes. “Hi, _beautiful girlfriend Jeongyeon_ ,” Sana says, a slight bite to her words. “It’s so nice to meet you, _Jeongyeon_.”

  
 

Jihyo gives Jeongyeon a light(ish) slap, setting her girlfriend stumbling backward out of her stupor. “Hey... _S-chan_ ,” she calls out, attempting in part to match the snark of Sana’s comment (though failing slightly in terms of intonation) just as Momo yells for them to head inside.

 

 

Sana feels obligated almost to let out a little giggle as she's heading through the door Momo's been holding open, the latter of whom gazes at her with stars gathered in the deep of her eyes (or so Sana believes). The squeak of a door hinge desperate for some much-needed oiling behind them, there's a tickle, a shudder dancing along the side of Sana's neck as Momo leans close and whispers a little " _Thank you, again, for... this_ " in her ear, the warmth of her breath forcing a sigh out of the girl. 

 

 

For some reason - a reason as odd as the way her arm had moved - she says " _I owe you the world_ ," and says it with such ease, such earnestness, that she quickly bites on the inside of her cheek. 

 

 

Sana assumes a specific type of attitude when she notices Jeongyeon giving her her trademark stare-down, as if her ears had betrayed her perception of her own loudness. The kind of attitude that compels her to stick her tongue out and earn an eye-roll from Jeongyeon. The kind of “fuck it all” attitude she's programmed her brain to assume for the rest of today, after the absolute lucid daydream that was her afternoon with Nayeon. So of course, of course, she'd say that. Of course, of course, she'd be _fine_ with how Jeongyeon's also connected to Momo in some way.

 

 

She feels a tug on her sleeve, pulling her back from where Jihyo and Momo are taking their seats in a booth lit by a yellow light that she can barely make out their smiles. “So you’re one of Momo’s callers, _huh_?” Jeongyeon whisper-yells through the comedically stereotypical pseudo-Italian music Sana swears she's heard in a cartoon about dogs eating spaghetti under the moonlight. 

  
 

“Heheh, yeah…”

  
 

“We’ll talk about this later, yeah?”

  
 

“Heh, yeah…”  

  
 

The sight of the yellowing faux stained-glass shade over the low-hanging ceiling lamp intrigues Sana as she slips beside Momo, the backs of her thighs already feeling the beginnings of cracks forming over the skin of the booth's seat. A waiter arrives at their table, bringing menus lined with the same characters of piglets, which Momo points out for both Jeongyeon and Jihyo with unadulterated joy. 

 

Sana flips through the menu with a soft but wavering smile, occasionally peeking from its size to sneak glances at Momo. She would have been able to sneak one more from behind the monstrous pamphlet, but she feels a cautious, slow jab against her wrist and she looks up to find Jihyo smiling at her, exuding an affable nature that Sana welcomes wholeheartedly. “Hey, hey, I was also wondering, is S-chan your real name or is it-” Catching a glare like none other she'd seen before, from Momo of all people, being directed at Jihyo, Sana feels the muscles of her lip tighten at Momo's sudden temperamental shift. “What? I’m ju-”

  
 

“It’s Sana,” she reveals, to a beaming Jihyo and a weirdly pouty Momo. “My name’s Sana,” she repeats with a nod. 

 

 

She holds back on studying how Momo flicks at the surface of the menu, or how a wrinkle forms on her nose, how she cocks her head to the side and purses her lips. 

  
 

Letting the menu fall to the tabletop, Jeongyeon clasps her hands in front of her and tilts her head to the side, receiving a side glance from Jihyo as she voices, with an air of triumph about the way she poises for the reply: “Ahh, _Sana_ …”

 

 

Sana assumes the constant smacking is just a "them" thing as Jihyo lands another loud one on her girlfriend's upper arm, her unknowing smile resuming as she chimes in: “I think it’s a really pretty name." With a scrunch of her face, Jeongyeon nods in half-hearted agreement. 

 

 

“So..." Jihyo begins, and Sana chooses to _slightly_ disregard her speech in favor of studying the girl Jeongyeon's been ditching their hangouts for. She looks to Jihyo, then to Jeongyeon and back to Jihyo again, and realizes after all those days spent poking fun at Jeongyeon's (horrible) taste in men, that perhaps her taste in women makes up for it. After taking note of Jihyo's wide eyes and bold smile, Sana compiles further questions for her _investigation_ with Jeongyeon later. Like asking for Jihyo's opinion on the Thanos thing. Because her girlfriend reasoning that the purple dude with the glove from the Avengers movie is cute should be considered an absolute hate crime against Jihyo. 

 

 

But as more pop in her head, she catches a string of words that piques her interest - something about _Momo_ , something about _her_ , something about - 

 

 

"... and Momo talks about you _all the time_ and I heard you’re a senior like us right?”

 

  
 

“Oh, we are?” Sana snaps her head around to ask Momo something with her eyes, but the latter doesn't answer. She looks as if what Jihyo said had been confidential information, looks as if the revelation would be more devastating than the leaking of a four-year-old secret. Sana pushes a “Yeah, then… Yeah!” out from her dry mouth.

  
 

“So what subjects do you take, and, well what school a-”

  
 

Jeongyeon saves the secret, cuts in with a “Ji _loves_ politics, debating, globalization, she's just... one of the most intelligent people I've ever met," the tone of her voice softening with each subsequent word, the subtle quirking of her lips so genuine. Sana just thinks she ruins the moment with a "That's why her head's so big, but, eh, I don’t have enough space in my _much smaller_ one for that so she’s always looking for an _intellectual_ for her _super deep discussions._ Right Momo?” that prompts yet another shove, yet another "Go away!". 

 

 

As the couple launches into a heated discussion arguing the relative largeness of their heads, Sana grabs at the chance to finally process what Jihyo had said. Because those words appear in bold in contrast to the mess of their conversation, they appear highlighted in her mind, begging for her to ponder their significance. Begging for her to wonder _why_ , and wonder _how it is it possible that her words don't match Nayeon's_.

 

 

“ _You talk about me all the time_?”

 

 

Momo turns to face Sana with her mouth held agape, and she blinks rapidly, sporadically, as if trying to piece something together in her head. Furrowing her brow to the sight of the menu in Momo's hands bending under the pressure of her grip, Sana gapes at the strangeness of the volunteer's behavior.

 

“ _Well, Jihyo… she…_ ”

  
 

To be interrupted with the shorter of the bickering pair flipping her hair and asking, rather loudly for as cozy a restaurant as this: “What do you think, Momo? Pasta or pizza?”

  
 

And with an energy Sana hasn't seen Jeongyeon exhibit in quite a bit of time, the older girl cries: “Come on, it’s pizza! Sourdough pizza! Sourdough!”

  
 

“I know you’re your family’s official mascot for sourdough consumption but don’t you get sick of it?”

  
 

“I...It’s good for you!”

 

 

"You say everything's good for me!"

  
 

Not a single muscle around Momo's mouth moves; she stays hush, her hands abandoning the menu to fiddle with a clay piglet stuck to the edge of the table.“ _You never answered my question,_ ” Sana starts, some part of her still reminiscing a question she'd faced earlier today, her hand balling into a fist under the table as she resists the odd urge to run fingers beneath her chin and tug her face to front on to hers. “ _Momo?_ ”

 

 

The volunteer's head jerks back and she lets out the littlest shriek upon accidentally tearing the piglet off of its wooden base, a layer of hardened glue where the statue in Momo's still hand once was. Momo hastily presses the piglet back onto the table and for a moment in time, Sana forgets about the strangeness and the confusion and focuses on one sole thing - Momo's continuous failed attempts at putting it back in its place. The girl eventually gives up and lays the thing down with a light pat on its pasta sauce-stained snout.

 

 

“ _Wh-Sorry, what did you say?”_ she mutters, combing through her messed-up bangs frantically. To which Sana shakes her head, gulping down her question as soon as she sees the troubled grin forming on Momo's face.

 

 

"Hey! I can see you texting from a mile away, Jeong!"

 

 

Sana feels her phone vibrate against her lap and her eyes instantly meet Jeongyeon's. The girl taps at her phone placed screen-down atop the table now, and mouthes something to Sana that she can't decipher. The schoolgirl unlocks her phone under the table, hides how she scrolls past screens and apps and reads her latest messages from the girl sat in front of her.

 

 

[19:22] ♡ Mom #2 <(•~•)> : Long story, Jihyo wants us to be a secret bcuz of family issues it sux

 

 

[19:22] ♡ Mom #2 <(•~•)> : Havent been dating long, 4 mo, but known her since we were 5

 

 

With Momo and Jihyo speaking about unremarkable, uninteresting school-related issues, of due homework and possible test dates, Sana archs her eyebrow and shoots a smirk Jeongyeon's way.

 

 

[19:24] Sana : WHAT ?? OMG !! WHY HAVEN’T U TOLD ME ABT HER B4 ?? ( ｰ`дｰ´)ｷﾘｯ AWWWWWWW !! ♡(^ω^人)

 

 

[19:25] Sana : do u loooove her? uwu

 

 

[19:26] ♡ Mom #2 <(•~•)> : Ive been in love with her for over a decade

 

 

[19:27] Sana : AWWWWW uwuuwuwuwu spill the beans later please~~

 

 

[19:27] Sana : i need the deets ~(•̀ᴗ•́)~

 

 

[19:29] ♡ Mom #2 <(•~•)> : Ya ok n I could see you spend more time typing emojis than actual substance

 

 

[19:30] Sana : ( ˘･з･)凸

 

 

[19:32] Sana : hey

 

 

The same waiter comes, takes their order, and is briefly surprised by the sheer quantity of food the four of them (mainly Momo) have ordered.

 

 

Sana giggles, again.

 

 

[19:37] Sana : does momo rly talk about me alot ?

 

 

[19:38] ♡ Mom #2 <(•~•)> : Ask Ji she knows way more but idk probs

 

 

[19:38] ♡ Mom #2 <(•~•)> : I know she knows you love joygi tho lol

 

 

[19:38] Sana : AJSDJKJHDSJL

 

 

[19:39] Sana : (゜Д゜*)>>

 

 

  
 

♡

 

  
  
 

Sana’s been to Seokchon Lake a couple times over the years she’s stayed here, but never at night.

  
 

The sky is an intriguingly beautiful phthalo, yet her eyes are drawn first to the Lotte World Tower across the lake - its shape highlighted by a yellow light like the clouds in the dusk sky which were now mysteriously gone.

  
 

Momo stands at what _would_ be a comfortable distance away from her as they walk down an abnormally empty path, having bid Jeongyeon and Jihyo goodbye a few minutes prior (the former of whom she’d deliberately nudged as a “You’d better explain this later”).

  
 

Momo _would_ be stood comfortably far from Sana, if not for the softest “ _Sana_ ” that slips from her lips. Her tense, upturned lips. Sana almost doesn’t register it - almost doesn’t acknowledge the name as her own but rather a mockery of who she really is to Momo. It’s unnatural. Leaves a sour aftertaste at the back of her throat.

  
 

“ _Your name… It’s, uh… Sana…_ ”

  
 

Momo _would_ be stood comfortably far from Sana, if not for that one little word she’s most familiar with, most responsive to, left to dangle in the subsequent silence and space between them. It dangles beneath spindly near-black branches and pale, sweetly-scented cherry blossoms and hexagonal street lights. It dangles above the Indian red pavement ornamented with a scattering of petals.

  
 

A dusting of petals that she kicks at, prods at, and picks one out of to examine up close. “ _Pretty_ ,” she mouthes, thoughtlessly, gently, yet emotively, just as the tree above her judges her worthy of a small sprinkle of them herself. They sway as they fall and few adorn her. One, two, three, maybe four.

  
 

Sana takes the chance to step closer, pick the petals from her hair and shoulders and brings one close to the growing warmth of the girl’s cheek. And “ _Pretty_ ,” she mouthes, emotively, gently, yet thoughtlessly, as Momo angles her face towards her hand and the petal the schoolgirl holds, if only for a second.

  
 

And then something snaps, and Momo turns away and resumes walking.

  
 

Finally discovering a use for the tiny breast pocket on her cardigan, Sana slips the petal in and taps it once for safekeeping. Launches into a short-lived sprint to catch up with Momo, ensuring this time that the space between them isn’t as painful as it was before. But she knows that while she can do something about the physical gap, something else separates them.

 

 

"The cookies you gave me were very nice." Momo clears her throat. "I, uh, finished them..."

 

 

In spite of the uneasiness of it, Sana cracks a smile and gathers that maybe, maybe, food may actually be the way to a girl's heart. Or at least, Momo's. _Not that it matters._

 

 

Then,

 

 

“ _About Dahyun…_ ”

  
 

Dahyun.

 

 

Always Dahyun.

 

 

Always the confrontation.

  
 

It's at this point where Sana understands Nayeon, because she too feels the sudden urge to let out another long, drawn-out sigh for the April wind to catch and steal. “ _But isn’t it so pretty tonight, Momo?_ ” she says, a hand momentarily reaching up to grasp the fabric of Momo's sleeve, around the bend of her arm as Jeongyeon had done with Jihyo, before flinching as she holds back on her impulse. Shutting her eyes, taking in a breath that cools her lungs and delights her with hints of coconut and baby powder, Sana questions: “ _I haven’t gone flower watching in a really long time, have you? Back in Osaka, my parents and I would bring my grandma to the park and we’d-_ ”

  
 

Momo flinches as well, moves, so her scent fades into the backdrop of a faint floral freshness and the earthy humidity brought by the lake.  Sana feels the sting - it strikes her with the abruptness of a pin. “ _I know it’s beautiful, S-chan. But please, we need to talk about Dahyun,_ ”  she explains, with a gentle firmness that intimidates Sana. “ _I understand how hard it may be, but you should talk to her soon, okay? Please?_ ”

 

  
And normally she would appreciate it, but not today.

 

 

“ _Why is it always Dahyun? Why can’t we talk about normal things_?”

 

 

She doesn't scream this, doesn't shout, doesn't raise her voice too much, but her guard falls and with it, she instills, in these words, a sense of annoyance. Because even as Momo is the cotton and the velvet and the intimidation and the comfort, and even as she remains in the limbo of liking and not liking Sana, Sana still clings onto the hope that Momo would see her as more than just a caller, as small a sliver it may be.

  
 

_“I know it’s important, b-but you don’t even like it when I talk to you about things other than my sexuality…”_

  
 

_“S-chan, this is more important than…”_

 

 

_“Than what?”_

 

 

Momo doesn't sigh, but she stops in her tracks and rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, a finger tapping at a lithe branch in her periphery. “ _S-chan_ ," she says, soft, gentle, with a tone Sana's more accustomed to, _"I’m a helpline volunteer, I want to help you with these things._ ”

 

 

Sana steps directly in front of Momo and holds her gaze with an intensity she never knew she was capable of til now. And her brows are lowered, and her fingers tremble, and her “ _Is it so bad that I want to be more than just one of your callers? I mean… I… I think about talking to you_ _all the time_ _about silly things and just… I don’t know, I wanna get to know you more, y’know? Like, I just…I really like you_.”

 

 

Again, with the not thinking, the not processing, the not bearing-in-mind-the-consequences-of-what-could-be.

 

 

Momo frowns.

 

 

“ _Not in that way! I wanna be your friend, I-”_

  
 

The downturn of Momo's lips fall further from a smile. _“I don’t want to be your friend_.” Momo states, with a sheer finality that Sana recognizes from weeks before, but which hurts her now.  “ _I… I don’t want to be your friend, S-chan. I want to help you get over this and be happy with who you are. That’s all I want._ ”

 

 

It hurts as if she'd lost someone. Hurts as if Momo was someone she _had_ and _could lose._

 

 

Sana chuckles, unable to gather the courage to cry in front of someone she's cried over the phone to for hours and hours. She smiles, unable to comprehend the extent of her emotions. She pulls out her phone, doesn't think, doesn't process, doesn't bother, doesn't care to, as she pulls up a number she hasn't seen in four years and hurriedly types, cancels, and retypes a message with fingers so deprived of their tactile senses she can't even feel the sheen of the screen.

  
 

[20:12] Sana : I need to talk to u about what happened 4 yrs ago

  
 

Letting her arm fall to her side, Sana remains at a loss for words. Her head aches with what feels like a creeping throb against her skull, there's a heat (not warmth) that burns her forehead and arms, there's a lethargy to her legs as she sways with however the wind takes her.

  
 

It seems that Momo'd seen the message from where she's stood, as she enunciates an “ _S-chan…_ ” that vanishes into the squawks of egrets that fly overhead. 

 

 

“ _When you talk to her, please… Do it for you, okay?_ ”  She places her heel forward to dare to walk from Sana, to walk away from her and her stupefaction, though it only lasts for a second or two before she turns around to find her caller appearing to shiver with a violence observable even from two shopfronts away. 

 

 

From behind one of the shopfronts, a cafe selling those overpriced drinks for tourists, a normal, middle-aged couple appears with two scrappy dogs in tow. Their snouts seemingly anchored to the ground as they sniff their way onto the main path, their paws hit the ground with a light pit-pat-pit-pat, and their owners talk and laugh and laugh and talk, unbeknownst to a gaping Momo stood just a few feet from their pets. 

 

 

Sana'd guess that they're some sort of terrier, though her attention shifts back from the cuteness of the yappy dogs to study the focus of Momo. She looks at them like she's missed them for years, looks to them as if they'd sound a bark that'd mean her name. Be it guilt, hurt or sympathy, or none of them, or all of them, Sana walks closer to the girl standing statuesque in the middle of the path, and presses against the small of Momo's back, pushing her forward to the dogs.

 

 

The brunette turns to the couple, catches the woman's eyes as she says with a perfectly faked innocence: “Hi, you have such cute dogs, Miss! May we please pet them?” But it seems as if it's already too late when the dogs practically hop and jump for Momo, their vocalizations growing exponentially excited, higher-pitched as they paw and lick at her.

 

 

They say that dogs can tell when someone's a good person, and the idea of it dawdles in Sana's disorganized psyche. 

 

 

Momo practically falls to the ground, kneels as she puts her entire heart into playing with the puppies, scratching their bellies, petting their heads, running her fingers through their fur as she says something along the lines of "Who's a good boy? You're a good boy! Oh! Your brother too! You're both good boys! Good!" 

 

 

It's not what happened before that breaks Sana, but this. This wholesome scene before her: Momo giggling, eyes and teeth gleaming under the streetlight, teasing and playing with terriers as she asks for their names and their ages and everything under the sun about them. It's the softness and the warmth and her eyes and her smile and every little sound she makes. 

 

  
Sana runs, as she always does.

 

 

 

♡

 

  
 

There’s no reason for Sana to be here this late at night. There’s no reason for anyone to remain in the deep of a park meant for daytime picnics and weekend gatherings when the shadow of twilight carpets its entirety. That’s why street lights along the paved paths meandering through the place are so sparsely placed.

  
 

That’s why, if you were one of the few strangers that have passed by either under the influence of alcohol or for some other questionable reason, you would’ve heard her first, not seen her. You would hear a sniffle, then another, and silence for the briefest moment, before a suffocated cry would break out. It would be prolonged and breathy, but muffled. And the cycle of sniffles and silence and sobs would continue as if, repeat after repeat, the pain would only build.

  
 

Her vision clears then blurs and clears with the shift of her contacts, though there wouldn’t be much to see anyways. It is black. It is _aching_. It is _cold_. And it is aching, and it _aches_. The trees, the bench, the pond, her surroundings are all familiar, but that’s as far as the familiarity goes.

  
 

Unfamiliarity in the form of not understanding her own emotions rears its ugly head and she grips and pulls at her cardigan for the protection and warmth it _could_ provide. But it doesn’t provide it. This cold is unavoidable and the sadness is unfamiliar and the only thing, the only person she can think of right now’s the catalyst to all of this.

  
 

Sana feels the wetness seep beneath her sleeve stained with makeup and bite marks.

  
 

No eighteen-year-old cries, no eighteen-year-old _hurts_ like this just because someone else doesn’t want to be their friend.

  
 

So why _is_ she?

  
 

And why doesn’t _she_?

  
 

♡

  
 

Puffy, sore eyes welcome the sorry sight of the recognizable melancholy blue of her home. Sana drags her feet through the gate, with the rest of her body tainted with the gnawing discomfort that stays and stays and stays. From the blue though - the sheer and utter reflection of her drowned spirit - appears a ghoulish glow of orange and red and yellow. And gray. A gray that originates from a huff and expands and rises and rises. 

 

 

“You get back later and later, Sana," her father says, still trapped in the darkness. “You got a boyfriend?”

 

 

“Dad…” Her hands press and knead against the frigidness of her cheeks while she stumbles closer to her father's lone figure. “I’m sorry I missed curfew… again. I promise I’ll look at the time more. I just- I… I’ve been um… Friend issues, no boyfriend, just… got distracted with some stuff I had to settle with a friend.”

 

 

His face emerges from nonexistence with a final puff of smoke before he puts what little light there is in the yard out with a flick and a crush of aged leather slippers against dirt barely recovering from the cold. She can barely see it, but with proximity, she notes how he points to the ground beneath is feet with an accusatory hand. “This is my vice but I always feel a little guilty.” 

 

 

Sana ambles over to the patio and switches on a light she'd once regarded as somewhat useless and impractical as soon as she'd grown out of her overly-excessive Disney princess phase. Greets the wooden flooring with a somber gaze as her father's face is illuminated with pinks and purples. “I remember… a little girl always coming up to me, saying “Papa, Papa! Smoking is really bad for you! It smells so bad, Papa! I want you to live a real, real long time, Papa!”” he lays out to his daughter, the timbre of his voice an awkward juxtaposition to the sparkly lighting fixture stuck permanently to the pole.

 

“I have a lot of regrets, Sana.”

 

“Dad, have you been drinking?” Sana asks, begs. 

 

“I remember… A little girl, always happy, always smiling, always wanting to help change others for the better,” he says, his eyes far gone into the distance, further than what Sana can even imagine placing. “You’d come home every day and put stickers on my desk to cheer me up. I’d go to your room every night and tell you bedtime stories and you’d add your own twists to them, laughing till you’d fall asleep.”

 

 

She lets slip a “ _Papa…_ ” from between gritted, trembling teeth. 

 

 

“You’d say, “Papa, Papa! One day I’ll catch tsuchinoko! Papa, one day I’ll get a car-sized huge cucumber to catch a family of kappa!” And I’d say yes, Sana. Yes, because you could do _anything."_

 

 

She hears a falter in his voice towards the end of his monologue and instinctively lunges, though sluggishly, aiming to grip at the knob of their ajar front door.  “Tsuchinoko… They don’t exist, Dad," she mumbles, her system ready to collapse into a comatose state as she blurts out an: “I’m tired, can I please go to sleep? Talk tomorrow, please?”

 

 

“Is it so bad that a father misses seeing his blazing little ball of joy every day? It’s been since we moved here but lately, you’re coming back later, going “running” more when I know you don’t like exercise…”

 

 

Sana cringes at the mention of her lies: they remind her of a past so recent yet so distant that just as she is able to trace to exact route she'd take to the park and the exact time at which she'd dial those numbers, she was unable to remember how, of course, Momo's always at the center on Saturdays for her scheduled helpline hours. 

 

 

How, of course, Momo wouldn't think of her as anything else but another _broken_ caller who needs fixing. 

 

 

In spite of the exhaustion obvious in the tenderness of her tear ducts, a few tears manage to fight their way through and line her reddened eyes. And Sana stumbles through the door frame, kicking her shoes off just to look up and find a very, very familiar piece of scrap paper held between her father's fingers. 

 

 

“I don’t know who this person is, but-“

 

 

Sana snatches it. She snatches it to unfold it and graze her thumb over the indentations of the pen against the paper, over a script she'd studied far too many times, over the number she'd tried to ignore, then didn't with the aid of alcohol. "Dad, where’d you, like, get this? This was in my room!”

 

 

Her father scratches at his five-o'clock shadow, rests his hand over his forehead lined with deep-set wrinkles. “You left it on the kitchen counter. And you should be glad that it wasn’t your mother who found it first," he explains, an insinuation dormant in it that Sana's hazy head is incapable of uncovering. 

 

 

“Anyway, I hope that…” He places a heavy hand over Sana's shoulder, but she jerks it away before an ounce of him lies on her. He continues: “- that whoever this person is, that they’re not the reason why you’ve been having ups and downs lately.”

 

 

Sana closes her eyes as if the blackness of the underside of her eyelids could be darker than that of their living room. 

 

 

She runs to her room, paper scrunched in her fist. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first, i apologize to samo nation 
> 
> second, hallo i've been busy w work (woops) but we r facing a drought & i am here to provide some hydration. i'm promising a bonus jeonghyo fic for background lore (?) in the (HOPEFULLY very) near future so u can look forward to that !! i'm also hoping to put out chapters quicker bc i dont want to reach like 200k words on my ~first~ gd fic... i'm so sorry for the overly purple prose (woops)


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